One particularly memorable riposte came in July 2008, after Pitchfork gave a 3.7 review to Movie Monster, the major label debut from the American indie band Sound Team. Unsurprisingly, it's far from unusual for the site to receive angry responses from bands that have been given the thumbs down. Record store owners, music promoters and college radio DJs often wait for the Pitchfork seal of approval before embracing a new band.
Once upon a time, such criticism may have been dismissed as the unqualified ramblings of a jaded hipster, but the site's continuous growth - which now includes its own web television channel and national musical festivals - has long since established its influence.īut Pitchfork's greatest achievement - and the thing that really infuriates its detractors - remains its carefully cultivated image of being the bellwether of the indie-music scene.
They've been accused in the past of both wilfully favouring the new and obscure over the mainstream and popular, and of destroying up-and-coming acts with an unwarranted kicking. But the fact that Pitchfork's reviewers have been sparing with their lowest rating hasn't stopped them gaining a reputation for putting the boot in. It will cleanse your brain of those little crustaceans of worries and inferior albums clinging inside the fold of your gray matter."Īt the other end of the scale, just 12 albums have been on the receiving end of a 0.0 score, including Sonic Youth's NYC Ghosts & Flowers and The Flaming Lips' Zaireeka. Sample quote: "It's cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike, infinite yet 48 minutes. Their 2000 review of Radiohead's Kid A has gone down in history as a classic of the genre. If the reviewers like something (and bear in mind that since 1996 they have given only 11 newly released albums a perfect 10 out of 10) they tend to drown it in fawning hyperbole. That's only fitting, really, because the site itself isn't exactly afraid of a strong opinion. Ever since it was launched in 1995 by Ryan Schreiber in Minneapolis from the back of his parents' house, it has been the object of both adoration and absolute hatred. But then Pitchfork has always been divisive. In fact, while the film is a revenge fantasy it could just as easily be promoted as a feel-good drama to the large number of indie rock bands and music fans who have nothing but disdain for the site. The reason? The music website in question is Pitchfork, the often painfully hip indie music website that many people love to hate.
In fact, this film to be directed by the independent filmmakers Mark and Jay Duplass, has been making headlines all around the world this week, and the Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon is being talked of in connection with the role of the grieving mother. It sounds like the plot of a rather implausible made-for-TV movie. In her grief, she decides to seek vengeance on the scribe and the website. His distraught mother refuses to believe his driving was at fault, instead blaming a journalist from an influential music website whose savage review of her son's debut album she believes contributed to his fatal lack of concentration on the road. A young aspiring rocker dies in a car accident.
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