Pitchfork And Joe Colly Repeat Imperfection!

vs.

Just about a year ago, Pitchfork staff writer Joe Colly wrote a bizarre, inane review of the latest Psychic Ills record, Mirror Eye. The Pitchfork editorial staff decided on a “rating” of 1.4 for the album, which for those of you who don’t speak Pitchfork is roughly equal to an F-minus-minus-minus on the A-to-F grading scale employed by most educational institutes. When Pitchfork grades an album 1.4, they are telling you that it is roughly 60% worse than the Busta Rhymes album The Big Bang, which received a 2.4 rating in 2006. In musical terms, a 1.4 means Joe Colly would rather listen to Music From The O.C. Mix 6: Covering Our Tracks than the new Psychic Ills record. In slightly broader terms, Pitchfork-approved darlings Animal Collective (9.6) are approximately 690% better than Pitchfork-disapproved ugly ducklings (except for their sexy bassist) Psychic Ills. Boy, I sure feel like a loser for enjoying Mirror Eye more than whatever the hell it’s called — the new Animal Collective album.

Yesterday Joe Colly tried to wrap his rubber helmet-protected brain around the new Apse album, Climb Up. Once again, he proved to readers that he can’t think for himself, and prefers safe, traditional pop music over anything striving towards…you know…change. He calls the album “odd (for indie listeners, at least)” as if that’s any way to constructively approach reviewing an album. Why does he care what the typical skinny-jeans-and-keffiyeh-wearing “indie” kid thinks? Better yet, why should we his audience care? Mr. Colly was asked to review the album, not judge it based on the stereotypical aesthetic tendencies of your average hipster. The minute you attempt something so asinine you strip yourself of journalistic authority and loudly declare yourself to be an idiot.

Not content to simply say the album is bad compared to any number of “better” pop albums, Colly decides to don his producer cap to tell the band how they could have done it better if he were there in the studio. By the way, I added quotations around “better” to show it’s not my belief that Madonna’s Hard Candy (5.3) or the About A Boy soundtrack (4.9) are worthy of higher ratings than the pitiful excuse for a grade used to punish Apse (4.8). So, yeah. Colly says that 12 tracks in 60 minutes is way too long! Not enough hooks, man! If you can’t capture the essence of something in under 3:30 you might as well not even write it. A song has a “natural limit,” and it’s much shorter than 5 minutes. Or so says uberproducer Joe Colly. He thinks “slow-building” numbers are “plodding.” In other news, I heard Joe Colly gave There Will Be Blood a 2.8 because “nothing happens for a while.” Also, Joe Colly survives on a diet of Easy Mac because he thinks its not worth it to stand in front of a stove any longer than it takes to listen to the Girls song “Lust For Life” (2:25). I’m scared to delve into his private life to learn more about his quickness issues.

By the way, I hate to sound as petty as a Pitchfork review, but Climb Up consists of 12 tracks and runs for 54 minutes and 51 seconds. The last Animal Collective albums contains 11 tracks and has a running time of 54 minutes and 42 seconds. I wonder if Joe Colly has reached the end of his favorite album of 2009? I mean, he was “spent” by the end of Climb Up…

Normally I’d give the author responsible for this review the benefit of the doubt and blame the e-zine’s editors, but this is the second time I’ve seen this author’s name attached to an atrocious review. When I consider the lack of regularity with which I read Pitchfork, I find this to be astounding. Either Colly has the worst luck of any Pitchfork writer ever in being assigned albums to review, or he has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to music. The final sentence of his review reads: “Toher goes on to claim on the final track “Closure” that he’s “never had a party as cool as this one,” and, man, I hope that’s not true.” This self-satisfied but wholly idiotic remark born out of a hackneyed music journalism trope seemingly validates my theory that the guy knows nothing about music. Though my suppositions aren’t based on empirical fact like the fool-proof Pitchfork rating system, I think I am nearly as reliable as they are.

Look, I don’t possess any true anger towards Pitchfork. I find it humorous. I would never trust one of their reviews because, well, I like to decide for myself whether things are crap or not crap. That their agenda is so clear and yet so frequently overlooked by people who use the site as more than just a resource for news or the occasional streaming video is beyond me. It’s kind of like when a Baby Boomer leaves a negative comment on my website telling myself or my peers to “go out and find jobs” while neglecting all the horrible things they’ve done to dismantle our country. You can’t take it seriously. Similarly, Pitchfork’s endless promotion of the dernier cri and their endless avoidance of what exists outside their little bubble renders them irrelevant.

And it’s not like I think the Apse record is jaw-dropping awesome. It’s pretty good. I just hate to see decent bands get the shaft from popular arbiters of taste whose sense of taste is so fucking bland. In the end, it doesn’t matter what score or rating a record receives…because scores are stupid, and rating things is gay. Decide for yourself if you enjoy something, and don’t base your opinion on the one prescribed by a website seeking to manufacture a scene or community of fellow rubber helmet-clad (but finely dressed!) retards. Remember kids: Only you can prevent the dissemination of brainless thought through international computer networks.