That's the end of Pitchfork then?

[The Mollusk]

https://thequietus.com/articles/33755-cond-nast-restructures-pitchfork-and-lays-off-staff

Look, I know it's easy to focus on their more snobby and elitist reviews and articles and be like "they were shite anyway", but it cannot be overlooked that they have broadly been one of the biggest and best publications for music covering a fairly wide range of material with some occasionally brilliant journalism. Love them or hate them, they have consistently brought so much music to the attention of a great many people, and in terms of whatever it means to be independent media, this is without a doubt a significant blow.

If nothing else it's just fucking depressing.

[Old Nehamkin]

I give this news a 6.425 out of 10.

[Norton Canes]

Ryan Schreiber, Pitchfork's founder and former editor-in-chief who sold the publication to Condé Nast in 2015, wrote: "Extremely saddened by the news that Condé Nast has chosen to fuck over the site I flogged to them for tens of millions of dollars. If only I'd have kept hold of it, eh. Shame."

[the ouch cube]

Thought they'd gotten a lot better, a slightly dry tone but much less sneering than its rep suggested. Liked their Sunday morning revisitings of canonical records.

They even gave metal/hardcore a decent amount of coverage (granted, it took The Great Hipster Metal Wars of 2005-2006 to get them in gear, but better late than never).

Fucking GQ? Fuck off.

[Old Nehamkin]

One less competitor for the now unstoppable Pierro Scaruffi dot com.

[Indomitable Spirit]

Haven't read the site regularly in a good while, but would still occasionally check out their year end and historical lists for inspiration when I didn't know what I wanted to listen to.

Was very into Pitchfork early 00s and remember enjoying a writer they had called Brent DiCrescenzo who was operating at the extreme fringes of the Pitchfork house style.  Wrote a 0.0 review of a Tool album which was just a big list of all the drummers kit. Used to give every Supergrass album a 9+. I think he resigned from the site with a review of 'To the Five Boroughs' by Beastie Boys where he said that writing in any ways objectively about music was impossible so see ya later. I know the pseudy nature of the reviews became a bit of a joke, but I found a lot of what they were doing quite thrilling at the time. Once the site became a bland-ised promotional arm of the indie-rock industrial complex it all felt a bit redundant.

[chip]

Rest in Piss

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Never read it so won't lament it personally though objectively it's obviously a bad thing when this sort of thing happens

[Sebastian Cobb]

One less competitor for the now unstoppable Pierro Scaruffi dot com.

Godisinthetvzine when i'm 'ere.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Scaruffi is a weird one because he was always the name that got mentioned disparagingly by 4chan kids on lastfm, in a "ahh you must be trying to look cool" sort of way. Oh you like Trout Mask Replica? You must read Scaruffi. No, I don't know who that is, I genuinely like Captain Beefheart?

I wonder who gets named by insecure people now as the tastemaker. That bald youtube guy, presumably.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Scaruffi is a weird one because he was always the name that got mentioned disparagingly by 4chan kids on lastfm, in a "ahh you must be trying to look cool" sort of way. Oh you like Trout Mask Replica? You must read Scaruffi. No, I don't know who that is, I genuinely like Captain Beefheart?

I wonder who gets named by insecure people now as the tastemaker. That bald youtube guy, presumably.

I already regret this post. Imagine reading this to a malnourished victorian

[The Mollusk]

I wonder who gets named by insecure people now as the tastemaker. That bald youtube guy, presumably.

C'mon, we're both active on RYM. We both know this has been the case for a while.

[twosclues]

A good resource for musical dunces like myself, got good value out of the best-of-decade lists they did most years. I feel like they got even more stingy with their numerical grades in recent years, or maybe music is just worse now.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

C'mon, we're both active on RYM. We both know this has been the case for a while.

fair cop i spose

[sevendaughters]

Obviously this is more about the global shithell that periodical publishing is in and on the balance of life this is probably bad, but P4K made it a lot harder for themselves when they became joyless culture scolds and turned against the very people who used the site in its first decade. Some of the obvious recent payola stuff was cringeworthy shit too.

Scaruffi is a great independent voice and a true evocation of what the internet can be. I am working my way through all of his 8.0+ records one by one and finding treasure (and annoying bollocks).

[PaulTMA]

An album's critical 'consensus' ended up depending on whether Pitchfork liked it or not, not exactly a great thing

[sevendaughters]

That was a problem but just generally speaking, they were a chore to read and the score was all that mattered. I know Swells wasn't the greatest writer on earth, and this article I'm about reproduce is him almost on autopilot, but there's so much more in these 600 words than there are in any of P4K's longform pieces in terms of style and substance.

THE LAST 'rock' act to play this all-seater venue was pop-eyed, mad-haired and soup-stained professional eccentric Patrick Moore and his amazing xylophone. And when some of the crowd leapt to their feet and started to mosh like maniacs, old Jack — the bloke who built and runs the building — corralled them like some septuagenarian sheep dog and forced them all to sit the fuck back down. And the 'rock' gig before that was wanky no-bollocks soft-wockers Del Amitri. About four years ago. Before most of tonight's audience had even started sprouting the first few tufts of pubic fluff.

So where the pigging frig are we? We're in the Orkneys — get the bus to John O'Groats and then hop on the ferry and get off when you reach the windlashed islands full of cows, sheep, seals and puffins — just before you get to Norway.

The doors open at 7.30pm and — shooooom — 250 Orcadian teens march in under ole Jack's baleful gaze and sit patiently through the hippyishly nauseating melodic West Coast folk rock provided by a local support band. Meanwhile — down in the artificial limb-pink painted dressing room — hard-drinking, fist-fucking, bleach-snorting Glaswegian/Edinburgian punk rock hard men Idlewild are bricking it big-time because they've got no sodding idea what to expect and are worried that the crowd'll beat them half to death with baby-seal clubs and then burn them alive in a giant Wicker Man if they disappoint.

"Children of the Orkneys! Burn down the churches! Kill your parents! We come to sing the praises of your new master — SATAN!" barks Roddy Woomble. OK, so he doesn't. But he should've.

When Idlewild start to rock, rows two to four (all boys) leap to their feet and start gesticulating and singing along and generally doing all those things that boys do when they wish to communicate to a band that they are REAL fans who've got all the records and are not (spit!) GURLZ and are thus COOL! The front row, all girls, just take one look at cute lickle Roddy Woomble with his floppy fringe and dead puppy dog in a tumble dryer body language and go, "Aaaaaaah! PHWOOOAR!" Within seconds almost the entire venue is on its feet. A lass shyly edges her way to the mini-moshpit in front of the stage. "What do I do?" she asks a friend. "You just jump and down — like THIS!" shouts her chum. Ole Jack growls but can do nothing. Punk rock or what?

Idlewild trundle through 'Captain', 'I'm A Message' and the new single 'Discourage' and the kids bounce like puffins on pogo sticks through the fast bits and wait politely and patiently through the not-so-fast bits and to those few of us who've ever experienced the spine-crushing frenetic madhouse rabidity of a fullblown ebola-on-toast Idlewild-at-their-most-mEnTaL show, it's all a bit subdued. It's hard to guess who's most nervous — the kids down the front or the kids onstage. But, fuck it, there's one hell of a lot of rock'n'roll cherries getting popped tonight and, let's face facts — these kids are lucky 'cos it could have been smug wankers Belle & Sebastian that took their virginity. Which, of course, would have meant that none of these kids would ever have gone to a rock show ever again and the evil folk enemy would have won 250 instant converts.

At 10.30pm the lights go up and 250 freshly shagged urchins stream out into the night. Ole Jack examines the three bust seats and barks at the stragglers. It's school tomorrow but one suspects that for these kids things are never going to be quite the same again.

Orkneys! Lock up your puffins! You have been rocked!

Sorry for making this 'the ills of P4K vs actual good journalism when I was less bald' but come on.

[mechanical blood goat]

I have to thank Pitchfork for turning me on to the band Old Time Relijun after giving one of their albums a 0.0/ 10 while making it sound brilliant (to me). But that was twenty years ago. Ah well we've still got... the Quietus?

[dontpaintyourteeth]

also what actual difference is there between a 7.8 and an 8.0, really? don't go "0.2 ahhh"

[Pauline Walnuts]

An album's critical 'consensus' ended up depending on whether Pitchfork liked it or not, not exactly a great thing

More like the other way around.

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/pitchfork-reviews-rescored/

[Famous Mortimer]

Haven't read the site regularly in a good while, but would still occasionally check out their year end and historical lists for inspiration when I didn't know what I wanted to listen to.

...I know the pseudy nature of the reviews became a bit of a joke, but I found a lot of what they were doing quite thrilling at the time. Once the site became a bland-ised promotional arm of the indie-rock industrial complex it all felt a bit redundant.

Pretty much my feelings. I'm as guilty as anyone for mocking their stupider reviews, but you usually found a couple of gems in their year-end lists. And the review series where they revisit old albums has been pretty good.

In a way, it's impressive they stayed in a form that reminded you of their glory days for as long as they did. Look what happened when the AV Club started getting sold and restructured - first, the site went to shit, then all the good writers left, then it just became a content farm. Or Cracked, which worked out it could make roughly the same amount of money (in the short term at least, which is all these ghouls care about) by getting rid of all their good writers and outsourcing those picture-listicles to the site's unpaid users.

[sevendaughters]

I can sort of imagine Wintour going into the office and it being like when Kendall fires everyone at Vaulter.

[Goldentony]

Tool fans everywhere applauding in 7/9

[Memorex MP3]

I thought Pitchfork were pretty good on the whole from the late 00s up to the Condé Nast acquisition tbh. They done a good job of balancing their old rep with broadening the content they covered. The end of year lists over that time were usually a pretty good overview of year for music with a mostly pop leaning

Almost immediately after the acquisition they stopped their 5 reviews a day standard meaning way less chance of some odd things appearing on the review page and skewed extremely heavily towards poptimism in a way that killed off a lot of their appeal for me. This move just feels like the natural endpoint of that pivot to me

[turnstyle]

Their review of Jet's Shine On album is still the best piece of music journalism ever committed to the web.

Jet review

[jamiefairlie]

I already regret this post. Imagine reading this to a malnourished victorian

And then imagine wanking whilst you imagine it. Disgusting!

[beanheadmcginty]

Only just occurred to me that a tuning fork could legitimately be called a pitchfork if the word pitchfork hadn't already been used for that big fork you use on hay. Is that why this magazine was called Pitchfork?

[sevendaughters]

they'll do a feature once every two months that will be titled like JHX ZYWO.2 DOESN'T NEED YOUR CO-SIGN and then you listen to it and it is the same drippy R&B they try and convince us is the future of androgynous sex music.