Pitchfork’s Joanna Newsom Review
I am not really a Joanna Newsom fan, but i just knew when i clicked on the link to pitchfork’s review of her new TRIPLE (!!) album they would award her with Best New Music. Seems every overly-ambitious/weird album that comes along pitchfork gives BNM to, almost as if it’s a feather of cool/’we get it’ to put in their cap. Fine, i get it, and a lot of the time the albums are pretty nice finds…
BUT…although i haven’t heard one lick of this album, i find it hard to believe the reviewer can write the following sentences and still give the album a 9.2:
A few tracks here, especially longer ones like the title track and “Kingfisher”, approach the winding density that marked Ys. On these, song structure is elusive– at any given moment you’re not sure if you’re listening to a verse, chorus, or bridge. The lyric sheet helps a bit, but with two hours of music to digest, you won’t feel too guilty about using the skip button here and there, or digesting the record in pieces.
Two hours is a lot of music, but having it broken into three discs, each the length of a 1970s LP, helps. You can dip into Have One on Me at a given point, listen for a while, and move on to something else.
I digress….
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Pitchfork is predictable in their assignment of the “best new music” (BNM) tag; and you’re right in that you could see the BNM tag coming for this album months ago (when P4K started writing about every rumor that surfaced regarding the album).
I also agree with you regarding the quotes from the review itself. How can an album – especially a bloated one like this – be a great album if you need to hit the “skip” button to get through it?
By comparison, how many songs did P4K recommend a listener skip on “In Rainbows,” or on “The Joshua Tree”? Easy…none. Hell, even their review of the unbelievably pretentious Dirty Projectors album didn’t suggest the listener skip any songs.
The conclusion here is skipping tracks is the first sign that – just maybe – the album you’re listening to isn’t great. In fact, maybe P4K’s review criteria is akin to “the emperor’s new clothes” – a lot of great words talking about something that really isn’t there.
on February 23rd, 2010 at 3:02 pm