My Problem with Pitchfork Reviews
Reviewing the reviewers.
Read this article on The Paper’s website.
An oasis nestled in a desert of Top 40 ubiquity; a glistening beacon of pretension in the distance. This is what indie music magazine Pitchfork is for those poor, struggling hipsters out there. Or, maybe hipster is an outdated term— for the fledgling Rate Your Music users out there.
Where else can you find diatribes on an experimental post-punk, post-rock influenced, spoken word album about the pains of working white collar jobs in (the gentrified part of) Brooklyn, but in Pitchfork’s meticulous reviews? What would I do if I didn’t have a trusty Pitchfork writer to explain to me why my favorite album sucks, and one that I was too lazy to finish is actually a work of genius?
Pitchfork serves as a unifying force in the indie world, a vital role that I’m grateful it fills.
But I do have the problem with the way Pitchfork crafts its reviews. Primarily, I find fault in the over-intellectualization they employ in their reviewing process.
To put it bluntly, they focus on lyrics far too much.
It’s hard to describe music. So what do you do when describing music is too hard? You zero in on the aspect of music that’s most straightforward— you whip out the lyrics sheet. The music of a song, the instrumentation, is layered with an immense amount of meaning; from the way the guitar’s tone is polished, to how the drums click, to the subtle inflections of the singer’s voice. There’s an endless amount of connotations and little impacts attached to these sounds and choices. It’s abstract, and deeply subjective.
While lyrics can be taken in different ways, the black and white words on a page are decidedly the simpler option for discussion. It seems that’s why the Pitchforkians have centered them and an album’s “thematic concepts” so heavily.
Besides over-simplicity, there’s another issue with this. It’s clear that many of us don’t listen to the lyrics first when they listen to music. Some would write this off as the masses’ lack of poetic depth, but I think it points to something else. Lyrics are meaningful, I wouldn’t deny this clear truth. But the fact that most of us, including music lovers, often place lyrics in a secondary position when we listen might have a reason. Maybe we don’t go to music for lyrics. Or themes and concepts. We go for… music. A well-rounded understanding of music must include lyrics. But one that centers them is inherently sidetracked.
Furthermore, there’s an inherent issue with this medium that Pitchfork exemplifies. In a music review, one discusses something which can never entirely be discussed. There’s simply a limit to the words we have to describe sounds. Even if we did have some kind of utopian language of infinite words and phrases, I feel that this problem would not go away. Music is a visceral, physical thing. It is experiential. That which is experiential cannot be fully put into words. It cannot be intellectualized.
While Pitchfork may be limited in its review process, it still remains vital in its sharing of good music that may otherwise be buried. From it, I’ve discovered some remarkable bands— Sweeping Promises, Caroline Polachek, Water From Your Eyes, to name a few. Pitchfork’s lists and reviews also provide a crucial analog-titled counter to music app algorithms’ absolute power to influence what we listen to. I’m glad that Spotify doesn’t get the final word in what new bands I find.
But remember one thing, you indieheads out there. When Pitchfork gives a crappy rating of your favorite album… don’t forget that you’re allowed to just disagree.