Who's the Best Band on Earth?

[Galactus]

I haven't really liked the Arcade Fire from the very first time I heard them...I think ndy was talking about them over on the other board. I listened and I wasn't impressed. This was before or right at the very begining of all the hype so it has nothing to do with Wal-mart...or even the hype itself. I dig plenty of hype bands. What bothers me is that people tell me how brilliant they are and I simply don't hear it. They sound like nothing more then an ok indie rock band. It always frustrats me when a band comes along and this happens...usually I can see what others like about it even when I don't, but the Arcade Fire I haven't got a clue about. I hear they're a great live band...appearently if I'd seen them live I'd feel different but I haven't so it still just a pretty average album to my ears. If I say "they suck" or something like that it's just ribbing rit or ndy or somebody that I know really likes them alot. The truth is as I type this I can remember a single song from that album. I've listened upwards of a hundred times probably and I can't remember a single damn song from it. It made almost no impression on me one way or the other...I just think that's pretty strange for "brilliance".

[rockysigman]

Might need to hear them in the right context. The very first time I heard a single note by the Arcade Fire was live, at a relatively small club in Detroit. I'd heard the name, but knew nothing about them (hadn't even really heard a description of their music). Went to the show because it was cheap and I was bored. And it totally blew me away. One of the greatest shows I've ever seen in my life, up there with the first time I got hammered at a GBV show, up there with seeing the White Stripes at the same small Detroit club before they broke, really only barely below seeing the Stooges. Unbelievable show. And after that, I just can't help but be overwhelmed by them every time I hear them.

[Rit]

*winces at thought of Melon listening to "I'm Still Your Fag"*

heh.

[Rit]

At least Stylus or Onion A.V. come off like a bunch of kids who know fuck-all expressing their opinions. At least NME is a legitimate force that has the right to be a bunch of cocky over-hyping assholes. Pitchfork really thinks there's something there, and that's what makes them so terrible.

i was reading your post against the P'fork happily enough, not agreeing but accepting the viewpoint... until i came to this paragraph.

Onion A.V? coming off like a bunch of kids who know fuck-all about music? i dunno. that statement alone is so stunning, i feel like i should take a shower or drink several cups of coffee right now. Stylus is utter junk, and guilty of everything you said about pitchfork, and Pitchfork is better than Stylus except that they sometimes might be guilty of the things you were saying

but Onion A/V is in a league of its own. The most thoughtful and spot-on reviews of things (movies, and music) i've seen in all my time of checking out music online mags. They're fairly understated, and i've never seen them cheerlead.

Pitchfork and Onion are two of the best around.. qualitatively speaking. The fact that you lashed out at them in particular must indicate something... merely because they believe, you rejected them. That's part of the whole pursuit isn't it? Pitchfork sets the credible standard for commitment to the scene, out of love for it, i say. Don't they organize that music festival of theirs, one of the more interesting ones? They do their best to expose readers to bands they think are quality. There's bound to be a certain amount of nebbish bias, but that's acceptable given that we're talking about music nerds who probably did little else in their lives.

All movements have their leading players, the middle of the pack, and the laggards. Face it or fight it, but Pitchfork is the leading player on the indie music rag scene BECUASE they believe something is there. People respond to faith in the subject matter, not to CYNICAL Exploitative viewpoints (which is where a lot of passeryby music fans come in -- they look at the whole thing of Music fandom and see it as a gigantic hoax that somebody somewhere is trying to pull on them... it's just more evidence of their hollow soulless bodies masquerading as human beings.)

You say Pitchfork is being pretentious... i say Pitchfork is talking genuinely, treating the subject matter and bands with respect, and awarding genuine interest or effort on the part of the bands, rather than talking up a bunch of suburbanites who deicded to get into the music game for kicks and chicks. (not that there's anything wrong with that, that's pretty much the reason i would get into a band-- but then p'fork would have every reason to dismiss me for the cynical hack i would be in that case)

[kmc]

Pitchfork is important, furthermore, because the indie rock scene IS the scene right now, and has been for the past few years. You cannot live off of mainstream rock. I grant that they are often pretentious (not necessarily a negative in the review industry, especially taken with a grain of salt) and not always spot-on (again, Arcade Fire jumps to mind. as do their relative slagging of "Z" and their weak review of the new Broken Social Scene). But they are also spot on about a bunch of stuff (like their Jet review).

I don't always buy what they are selling over there, but generally speaking I think Pitchfork is a valued tool.

[luke]

That was bad phrasing on my part with Onion A.V., and I knew I shouldn't have put that there. They're the only ones I can read and trust to get a perspective viewpoint out of. Much superior to their tired satire magazine. They tackle things intellectually and don't pretend to have some massive scope or influence, which is perhaps what I was getting at. Unlike Pitchfork, they're not poseurs.

Obviously we disagree here, but what you see as their minor faults, I see as major ones. They cheerlead on nearly everything they praise. You can read the tone of one of their news blurbs and then predict exactly how they're going to review that band's album when it comes out in a month.

I don't think Pitchfork has the scope to lead the way in the indie scene. They're just not diverse enough, have no understanding of anything but the same old tired scenes. I understand that it's a lot harder to cover indie than mainstream, as, well, indie counts for most of the music out there. But their scope is so small, yet they act like they're doing us a favor when they push bands that are either going to turn up one way or the other or who don't deserve to be turned up at all.

Totally agree that Onion A.V. hits things from an intellectual viewpoint. But Pitchfork is just too concerned with sounding cool or artsy, and it leaves them with nothing.

I hear ten or twenty bands a day on XM that you can't find any reviews for on Pitchfork. I talk to friends all the time who are suggesting bands that Pitchfork either will never cover or won't cover for a few months. They are much too narrow and mainstream in their coverage to be in any way representative of the indie music scene.

Now the indie trend scene, that's a different story.

[luke]

ded said:

The Shins, now there's a band that deserves more praise around here.

Gotta say, in the midst of all the Shins hype that was tearing into things sometime ago, I felt much like you did with Arcade Fire. An average band who're a bit too sugar coated to listen to for more than half an hour, and who burn out pretty quick in the long run.

Friend of mine said that Arcade Fire sounds like Modest Mouse with twelve people in the band, and I thought that was really interesting.

[JACkory]

You cannot live off of mainstream rock.

...but, hoo boy, what fun we'll have TRYING...

[NdY]

The Shins will be everywhere this year once their album gets released. It'll be brutal.

[NdY]

Luke's obsessed with Pitchfork.

[Rit]

Well, it's a good kind of obsession.. doing it because he loves the music and is worried about flakes intruding upon it.

Pitchfork is clearly not superhuman. They create the centre of the indie scene for the time being. Their time will pass. A legitimate question, imo, is whether they merely occupied that centre through accident and circumstance, or if they applied a set of values to it and WON that centre through effort.... I'm thinking in particular about unflagging support for obscure bands that would never have got exposure otherwise. AND also hard to categorize indie genres that can't get a glimpse at a wider market were it not for the existence of niche coverage.

Where you make an excellent point, Luke, is when you kick on P'Fork for their mainstream indie coverage or their attempts to turn some act into an indie superstar... But where Pitchfork does good is when they shine their spotlight on all the no-hopes and slim-chances of this world.

[luke]

No, I just need something bitch about around here, and Pitchfork pops up more often than, say, Iron Chef America or the current state of women's fashion.

[phil]

Ugg boots are out !!

According to Tunes ...

[Thorngrub]

You know, we really could develop a "point" system, I was thinking about this last night, all we'd have to do is generate an index of all possible "qualifiers" and make sure they were all assigned an equal value (of 1 point each). That way, a band that has been around might get more points than a newer one, while the newer one might make up for that w/a point for moshing, see - ? The key would be to simply construct a defininitive index of qualifiers each worth 1 point. As long as all qualifiers have been thoroughly anticipated - I would imagine it would take some work boiling them down to a workable list - then that template of qualifiers would be sufficient to generate ANY band, regardless of style or genre, the points it needs to arrive at a Total Point Value with which to go up against any other band, regardless of genre or style. See what I'm saying here? So long as we can come up with a list of qualifiers, and eventually "publish" this list as being definitive for our purposes, then we should be able to plug in any band and see how many points they generate.

[Galactus]

That sounds nerdy enough I might have thought of it.