Lobster in a Bucket

It's not the music that bothers me. It's almost uniformly great. It's the attitude.

I haven't seen anyone else on the net hitting the nail as squarely as these guys. So I'm willing to deal with the attitude. Honestly I like it. Many mediocre albums get mediocre reviews. Pitchfork is not afraid to speak plainly about these things. Mediocrity in art is not good. It's part of the blending on consumption economics and art that yields bands like, Saves the Day.

Why are they hitting the nail on the head squarely? Becuase they're pitchfork? Being an asshole isn't ever excusable no matter how, uh, "right" they are. Viewing music as some formal entity might excuse that a bit, but dear Lord Matt, I hope you're not going that Enlightenment route. The willingness to makea statement like "consumption economics" is retarded.

It's like, how 'bout you tell me why, you, personally, as in how it made you feel, like, honest self-revelation, to listen to Saves the Day. Write well, be coherent. Be thoughtful. No cynicism or anger, which isn't proper Christian behavior. Say something real instead of anti-pop culture lingo.

Granted, Pitchfork ruthlessly tearing apart Liz Phair for her "mainstream" release is not fair, nice, or Christian. But I find that I feel the same things about most albums that Pitchfork tears apart mercilessly.

If it were I, a Christian, who sometimes writes pop-culture pieces in the incredibally limited print run of the Pop-culture editor of the Bagpipe, I would probably just not review things that Pitchfork tear into, because I would rather say nothing at all than not-nice things.

I think that one of the things that Pitchfork does so well is promote the fusion of pop and art. They don't generally give avante-guard noise albums the best reviews. They give the albums that beautifully challenge the strictures of pop-music and maintain that sensibility.

What do I feel? I feel that, Saves the Day makes me feel dead, they are essentially the same as many other so-named "emo" bands. They are particularly odious to me because they are really just a product marketed to kids that want to listen to music different from what the cool-kids are into at school. (This all comes back to High-school doesn't it). When I look back to my days in highschool I listened music just to express my frustration at not being cool. Saves the Day, Hey Mercedes, The Getup Kids, and other emopop bands like them sell cool to those who have to pay money for it.

I feel sad about that. You can still enjoy any one of these bands, but to me listening to them just reminds me of negative stuff.

Another tangential(sp?) point. Cynicism. I have always thought this word suggested criticism as an end in itself. That is, negativity that doesn't lead into something more positive. But we're seeming to throw around this word to describe a lot more. Am I correct in feeling this?

Ah, makes a bit more sense now. You listened to that style of music before i.e. Get Up Kids etc. and all the stuff a certain Tacoma friend of ours is into. I haven't been exposed to it (in any amount until the last couple days) before. So it's kinda all new to me. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's groundbreaking music in any sense, I just find it pleasent to listen to while crankin' out code or eatin' my lunch...

And to be fair to Pitchfork, when a new album is out, I usually head there first to read a review. I just have a hard time forgiving them lambasting our national anthem and Lord With Glowing Heart. It's like, they just went over the line that time...

But on to cynicism: I do think there's traditional cynicism which is criticism for criticism' sake, which I think is part of what we're talking about. Then I think there's cynicism that is motivated largely by anger. A specific type of that I'm talking about is white educated suburban kid anger, much of the type Ben Fold's rips on in his Rockin' the Suburb's album. These kids haven't been oppressed, have no reason to think so, and yet are pissed off at the world and mainstream America...

Then there's another level: elitist cynicism. This is the cynicism of the type seen in High Fidelity. A buncha folks who feel like they're undapreciated, or more likely, know more than everybody else and then subconsciously take that out on the folks they perceive as the "little" folks around them. You and I have at one time played that role Matt, I'm fairly certain, and we can list many others. NPR is filled with people like this, you feel they are educated and aren't respected, and eventually are inable to find the value in anything other than some bizarre group narcissism.

I think Pitchfork is in the second category, striving it's way on to establishing themselves firmly in the third.

I don't really see how cynicism describes the second things. That's more like snoberry, condescension, and elitism. Now elitists can be cynical, but elitism itself isn't.

all this talk about pop art is making me hungry for some sort of toaster streudel.