People who really really listened to music looked down on Pitchfork a little. It was a huge player in the culture, but still not big enough that anyone outside of music fans would know about it. It was the already the poster-child for snooty-ness, and hipster-culture, and over-wroughtness. I signed on to Pitchfork in high school, and as I said it was still pretty big at that point. When they tell you somethings good and you don’t quite get, you know that it’s because you have to keep trying. They’re the friend that grew up playing piano and listens to much more complex music than you. A music review site that you trust plays this same role. Then a close friend told me I was wrong Sufjan is earnest, try again. The first time I listened to Sufjan I felt smothered by his religious references, that dude is way too cheesy.
If anyone ever asked I would say I learned about most of my music through Pitchfork.
I had to have trust that it was my brain that was a few steps behind these artists, and not the reverse, in order to get to a point that I had understood what it was that artist was setting out to do. was I probably would have listened to them once and tossed them aside. Taking a look at the Albums of the Year of the Past: if someone didn’t tell me how great Kid A, or My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, or Merriweather Post Pavilion, or The Glow Pt. Every album that is innovative and/or experimental takes at the very least a few listens to understand. I cringed when I would read some of the reviews but dammit I trusted whatever number was printed on the review. When the group is together that person is going to get ripped apart, but 1 on 1 everyone is tight with them. It was like the friend in the group that everyone picked on. But honestly, it was an endearing mockery. If you had a conversation with someone about Pitchfork, making fun of it was usually the first thing that you did. They already had a history of deleting reviews, changing reviews, giving really bad reviews to anyone popular, etc. When I started frequenting the site it was relatively late. My understanding is that from its origins it always had a reputation for pretension. This little habit of doing things allowed me to fall in love with albums and genres that I normally never would have discovered. I had developed a pretty regular schedule of checking the reviews and downloading the albums that appealed to my taste and any albums above a certain threshold of score. I say without any hesitation that for over a decade Pitchfork has played a key role in my music taste, and consequently, my identity. I’m slightly ashamed that I’m writing this but it’s for good reason.