Larry Dobrow of AdAge lets rip on Pitchfork.

…It has been the worst thing imaginable for the art of music criticism.

It = the internet, in that case from the opening sentence. But he has definite issues with Pitchfork particularly, don’t worry, my summary of which follows:

My problem with Pitchfork boils down to this: Its contributors don’t seem to like music very much…The Comic Book Guy ‘tude annoys the hell out of me. I don’t see any point in playing along with Pitchfork’s sucks-sucks-GOOD game…Snark is boring; give me the incredibly literate enthusiasm …over the trademark Pitchfork hoity-toityness any day…I’m put off by the quality of Pitchfork’s writing, especially in its bread-and-butter reviews…Forget merely siccing a few members of the Bad-Writing Police on them; Pitchfork demands the assembly of a Federal Bad-Writing Task Force, complete with subpoena power and automatic weaponry.

He goes to mention issues regarding attracting advertisers [it is AdAge] but does give credit where he sees it due:

The site’s features fare much better in this regard, with the “Found Sound” recaps of rediscovered old records offering moments both warm and witty. Pitchfork also deserves props for updating its news section early and often as well as for its intuitive design, from which any number of minimally navigable music sites could learn something.

As far as the reviews go - I’d say I am in agreement - some of their writing is down right atrocious - I’ve commented on here before that they owe me some of my time back for reading some specific reviews and hating myself for doing so.

BUT!

Sometimes they offer up gold [to me anyways], such as this interview with Josh Grier from Tapes ‘n Tapes talking about their new album Walk It Off due out April 8 on XL.

The Loon remains one of my favorite albums of the 2000s and I am hoping this one is even slightly comparable in levels of enjoyment provided.

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