Speaking of getting on the bandwagon, Pitchforkmedia.com, a site often driving these conveyances for a significant swath of the nation’s music fans, reviews new music this week in the form of new discs from Carl Stone and Elodie Lauten. In your humble opinion, how well did they do?Â
I give Mike Powell points for risking mixing entertaining, over-the-top language–i.e. “foofy, inert bullshit peddled by charlatans to suckers who would stoop to intellectualize a rock”–with some universally comprehensible analysis:
Woo Lae Oak is an amnesiac for itself, an ever-renewing blank slate. The problem with assessing records like this is that they rely on the listener’s tolerance and imagination, which, comfortingly for all parties involved, nobody has any control over. …Stone even named the piece after the Chinese restaurant of his choice, a self-effacing gesture that acknowledges peace as marketable chintz– where other composers might aspire to recreate ancient prayer scrolls, Stone takes refuge in fortune cookies. Even when I can’t fully immerse myself in it, I leave with the important lesson that there’s no inherent grandeur to size, no necessary seriousness to serenity.
Evocative writing, but it’s not telling us what we’re used to when it comes to new music record reviews. Are you missing what you’re not reading? I like that there’s no name-dropping. You don’t need to know jack about any other recorded music in this genre to understand what’s being discussed. That’s not everyone’s cup o’ tea and sometimes the name-checking is vital to the issue at hand, but after reading this review I’ve seen the work from a fresh perspective and am excited to hear it again. That means it’s done its job as far as I’m concerned.
Except that “Woo Lae Oak” sounds like it would be a Korean restaurant, in which case fortune cookies would probably not be given out. Points for metaphorical effort, though.
I dunno – he drops Alan Rich, Robert Ashley, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Meredith Monk and Blue Gene Tyranny’s names over there. Dudes’ droppin’ names through the floor.
Molly clarifies: You’re right, you’re right, those names are listed out at the end, but that’s just a list of fellow travelers on the label. I was concentrating on the music description. There’s no comparison shopping, as is “grainy like that 1967 limited release recording of Sam–you know Sam!–but this was with his first band. I found it in a dumpster behind La Monte Young’s loft that time we drank tea till 3 a.m.
Just out of curiousity, I counted the # of black music acts on Pitchfork’s “most often read reviews” list — I recognized 2 out of 40. No Latin-derived music. No search results for Cecil Taylor, Maria Schneider, Steve Lehmann. Vernon Reid’s Yohimbe Bros. record of 2002, not the new one. Two cds for Ornette Coleman, both records from his Atlantic sessions of the early ’60s. They cover Miles Davis boxed sets and John Zorn, They drop names (AACM to Frank Zappa) and refer to info that’s not in the review, as well as to history over sound hear on the albums. Pitchfork covers new music? Depends on what you mean by “new music.”
Molly replies: Hi, Howard. Sorry for the confusion. No, Pitchfork generally covers indie rock and related artists. It’s rare that the interest chain extends out far enough to hit what I usually mean by new music, so I was genuinely surprised to see the discussion of Carl’s album and was curious how its position there might hit people.
…Howard Mandel’s point about the narrowness of Pitchfork’s range is an important one. (How and why could a site with such a narrow focus become so important? Especially, as much of the music that is championed becomes forgettable a year after it’s noted, if not before. Does the site’s cultural authority rest not with the work that is championed but the people–young, educated, financially secure white folk–who identify with the music the site covers, whether that music is actually good or bad?)…You would imagine that ignoring a lot of good and important music would make a site less respectable, not more respectable.
Molly replies: I think we have to agree to disagree in the quality of the music Pitckfork covers. However, to your point re: narrowness, I wonder if a) it only looks narrow if these are genres that are not of deep personal interest, similar to how any genre means something to the majority and something quite more nuanced to the fan; and then also b) if narrowness is a good thing in a time of so many options. Many of us are paralyzed by the scope of modern-day options and welcome a chance for someone else to lead for a while within boundaries we already know we can navigate.
I’ve reviewed your review of Pitchfork’s review, and I give it a 6.8. 😉
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/pitchfork_gives_music_6_8