Remember being baffled by the reviews for sufjan’s all delighted people ep when it came out. They all gave it middling scores, when it’s clearly brilliant - didn’t affect my enjoyment, but may have been the moment when I subconsciously decided to disregard critics almost entirely.
Good thread…I am slightly too influenced by reviews…or at least I used to be…I was going to say Echo and The Bunnymen’s mid-late era period is underappreciated - there are weak points but there is a lot to like in Evergreen, What are you going to do with your life, Siberia and Meteorites.
I also like Kingmaker and not sure they were ever acclaimed
Yeah with you on this about Arcade Fire’s latest - but not many are judging by the critics, this board (and I see a rateyourmusic average of 2.5/5)…I listened to Arcade Fire before gauging the consensus and gave it a strong-ish 7/10…was surprised by the backlash…but then I wasn’t really a fan of reflektor…and for me this was a step back in the right direction…still a mile off Funeral and the highlights of Neon Bible
Bit of a tangent…I’m very guilty of resorting to marks/10 but in my defence life is v busy and I spend hours in December properly writing up my top 40 for friends and as an aide memoire as penance…
I think we are in a society where everything is rated which is a bit galling but I do find it useful to get an overall sense of how highly the reviewer rated the LP…life is (too) busy and so metacritic is a useful source for quickly noting new artists to check out based on the overall consensus of the music hacks…general rule of thumb +80 if its a genre I like’ +85 of any genre…Rate Your music can also be a good resource for checking out which of an artists’ lengthy back catalogue to start with…I’ve done this kind of thing with the likes of John Coltrane and Miles Davis
I remember some highbrow-ish music/culture magazine came out (forget the name) and like Sight and Sound, in film, it refused to rate and I found I missed it
I do very much agree with getting to know which journalists tie in with your tastes etc
The only instance of this that I can think of right now is Bloom by Beach House. I had never listened to them and gave it a shot - it seemed fine but I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. I think all of the raving got me to listen to it more times and more closely than I would have normally then, and sure enough it was great (especially that incredible “New Year” - “Wishes” - “On the Sea” sequence).
What usually happens though is the opposite - I still won’t “get it” after many tries, and I’ll start getting annoyed that the band is getting all of this praise over more deserving artists (whereas if the reviews were average or non-existent, it would just be an album I’d have no feelings about). The best examples I can think of are Animal Collective (Merriweather Post Pavilion), Tame Impala (Currents), Arcade Fire (Reflektor), and My Bloody Valentine (mbv). The over-the-top praise for Merriweather Post Pavilion remains baffling, and I remember being very salty at the time that an album like the Them Crooked Vultures one wasn’t getting the recognition instead. The glowing reviews of Reflektor and mbv felt like the critics decided ahead of time that they were brilliant (and meanwhile that same year, Youth Lagoon’s actually-brilliant Wondrous Bughouse got some nice reviews but seems to have been forgotten). Similarly, the praise for Currents felt like the critics’ wanting to declare Tame Impala as having “made the leap,” regardless of how good the actual album was.
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It’s so good! I know I’m a diehard Corgan fan, but I genuinely don’t understand the hatred directed at it. The songs are great, and that electro-shoegaze sound / atmosphere still feels so unique and effective. The album cover didn’t help things I guess.
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“Currents” was a HUGE letdown for me, after all the pre-release hype. Their first album is still their best, IMO.
NIN - The Fragile. Met with anything from mild confusion to outright derision at the time. Seemed to be very unfairly lumped in with the nu-metal travesty.
I feel my long term batting for it has been vindicated.
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Or maybe most people don’t think much of it?
Actual universally hated or loved stuff doesn’t exist. Just enjoy being in a minority don’t start trying to reason it as a sort of misrepresentation of what the true majority would be 
Unless it’s trendy metal though pitchfork has never given a shit/rated something. All that’s happened between those two reviews is that reznor has become a lot cooler so they gave it to a fan on their staff to review as opposed to not.
That first review is so shit.
Re:main point…a well written good review will encourage me to check something out I may not have before… But a bad review wont put me off something…if anything may lead me to investigate further if it’s a particularly vitriolic.
Saying that,its obviously different these days with this darn internet…as its so much easier to check things out (I.e; half listen to half the tracks and decide the reviewer is a bozo)
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This might sound a dumb question, but: what is this Pitchfork that everyone constantly refers to? I mean, obviously there’s a website and they review music, but is it just that, or is it the internet arm of some music magazine, or what?
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Just the website.
The awful awful website.
Thanks for the warning. In that case I won’t go there, and I’m a bit mystified why others go there.
Around the turn of the century it kind of positioned itself as the go to place for american indie reviews/news. For me it was one of the first music sites I regularly read (along with Lambgoat!) and it was better back then (or is that nostalgia!?). Kept looking out of habit for years but now hardly ever. Seems to be a pop mag these days in all honesty (and sponsored content like the best beers to drink with a record or some shit)
Am sure some people have a better insight and opinions but yea, its not worth reading now)
I still think that the buyer reviews on Amazon are the best source, provided of course that there are enough of them - which usually means waiting until the album has been on the market for a little while. Of course in one sense this is a biased sample, because the reviews come mostly from people who have bought the album, hence the only really bad reviews are going to come from people who probably bought it on spec, perhaps based on the fact that they loved something else by that artist and expected something similar. In some ways though this kind of “bias” makes more sense than polling a random sample of the population. For example, a large proportion of the music listening public hate rap music with a passion. There would be little point in asking those people whether Kanye West’s latest album is better than the last one; to them it’s all crap. Better to ask someone who has a bit of liking for the genre overall, and can compare one with the other.
Id just like to say good shout of Century of Self. I plug it a bit here. Its an absolute banger of an album
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Just joshing as I really like the first YL album but Bughouse never clicked with me outside of the singles.
Haha, good call out, I’m a hypocrite 
. I wanted to spare you guys from a wall of text post about that album, especially since I’m sure I’ve done it before here.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you though - it’s much more uneven than my other albums of the year, but the lesser moments (the more circus-y sounding songs) do a good job of setting up the heavy hitters. “Mute”, “The Bath”, “Third Dystopia”, and especially “Raspberry Cane” are four of the best songs I’ve ever heard from anyone and definitely in the depressing classic hall of fame. And the instrumental opener “Through Mind and Back” is one of those “finger poking the sad part of the brain” songs.
Based on how much I loved it and how much room there still was for improvement, I genuinely thought the third album had potential to be one of the few best albums ever written. That unfortunately didn’t happen, and I still don’t quite understand what did.
Hi. I like pitchfork reviews. I’ve never bothered with the main site, I just have the review page bookmarked on my phone, so all the stuff about their celebrity pop news doesn’t affect me.
I find the pitchfork bashing on here relatively baffling actually. Yeah sure some reviews are better than others and some ill agree with and some I’ll disagree with but I still find it (in conjunction with other places) a good source of pointers for interesting new records.
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I still need to listen to that one to see if I like them at all. I had listened to the second album a few years ago when it came out and kind of forgot about it, and then gave a real effort with Currents but it didn’t take.
It really is. It’s great start to finish and the only reason it gets crapped on is because it doesn’t sound like Source Tags or Madonna.
