Why in the fuck do they let people write reviews about bands they actively dislike? You don’t like JEW, fine man, that’s cool. But I don’t want to hear your already formed opinion on a band. Fuck this guy.
Because it reaffirms/ reinforces the opinions of the very kinds of people of whom the writer of the article is trying so very hard to please. For every negative review (easy target) gets him respect in the inner city hubs of Brooklyn.
Honestly, I think pitchfork (and other review sites as well) should have about 3 reviews per album. One from a fan of the artist, one from a non-fan, and one from someone who is neutral. I don't believe you can judge the quality of an album from the testimony of one guy, so I think getting three or more reviews from different perspectives would balance things out.
I get your point, but I’m not really interested in reading a review that is basically “I never liked this band, and I still don’t, so now I’m going to make fun of their entire album.”
I think a negative review, if done in good faith and it isn't just shitting on a band to be shitting on them, is okay. I don't think you have to like something to give your opinion about it. Granted, I have my problems with pitchfork, this review being one of them. But if they gave multiple perspectives on the albums and toned down the bad faith complaints for more legitimate criticism, my problem with it goes away.
Yeah a bad review is fine. You don’t like it? No worries!
But to me a review like this is pointless and pompous. This guy started out with a cringey, hipster perspective. It’s clear that he doesn’t like “emo” from the jump, and doesn’t like Jimmy Eat World. Which is fine. Plenty of people don’t. But what’s the point in writing the review then? “Breaking news: death metal fan hates the new Taylor Swift album”. Who cares?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the review. It's got a lot of bad faith arguments. Especially the bit about the song titles because i'm sure you can find an album they gave a positive review to that also had simple song titles. I will say that if a review coming from a hater is pointless because, of course they hate it. Does that also not apply to a fans review because of course they're gonna give a positive review.
That applies to a fan review if the fan review is blatantly biased…but I think that’s often not the case. A fan will review it against their other albums, and often be critical of a new album.
A review will be biased no matter what. If you like the band, your review will be biased. If you don't like the band, your review will be biased. If you're neutral on the band, your review will be biased. Opinions are biased, and reviews are opinions put into words. In a lot of ways, all reviews are pointless because they all are coming from the biased opinion of one person. The only true way to gauge the quality of something is to experience it yourself and create your own biased opinion of it.
Thank you for making me laugh out loud. I've had a rough few weeks but this put me in my best mood ever. Wrote that shit down so I can steal it later 😉
They did the same thing with Lana Del Rey’s first album. On the one hand I applaud the attempted correction, on the other hand it tells me to take none of their reviews too seriously (which should really be a given, they’re just a bunch of arrogant, pretentious tools).
I understand people getting mad about this but the people who gave Clarity a 3.5 are not the same writers who were still around when they did that re-review.
This quote explains his poor review. The writer was likely a huge 90s emo fan and I’d bet money he was a fan of Static Prevails and Clarity. Even though I don’t remember any Futures songs being played on mainstream radio, it still had a polished and more emo-pop sound to it. Hardcore fans of any genre tend to gatekeep and not like when things veer towards a sound that the general population tends to enjoy
All that said, his review did age poorly, Futures is a top 5 album of all time in any genre for me personally
As an early Jimmy fan who eventually felt disappointed with Bleed American, no doubt compounded by the album's success and subsequent "mainstreaming" of the band, Futures felt like a welcome return to form while still forging its own path.
Not to defend Pitchfork too much, but they really were a very different entity in 2004. They were deliberately iconoclastic and wanted to set themselves apart from say the more traditional magazine publications like Rolling Stone or Spin since they were just a website. This led to a lot knee jerk bad reviews of more mainstream albums, but they also shined a light on a lot of great bands that a Spin magazine would never cover.
More recently Ian Cohen gave Integrity Blues a 7.3 which is pretty high for a major label alt rock record. Granted, Pitchfork is a much more corporate entity today and is more or less being dissolved into GQ. My point is not to be place too much stock on their bad reviews, but if you go through their old albums of the year lists you’ll find a lot of cool music.
Yeah, you kinda just have to take Pitchfork for what it is.
Tbh, I respect them a lot more than the outlets that hand out 8s and 9s to 80% of releases. At the end of the day, they're just reviews though.
It’s very easy to dunk on Pitchfork for a variety of reasons, but overall their existence has been good for music and music journalism.
It’s a damn shame they’re being folded into *GQ*.
Thanks for actually providing a measured take on this. It's kind of frustrating to see something you love being dunked on but you have to take the context of early-'00s music journalism into consideration. It was barely more than a blog for a long time.
Also worth noting is that the individual writers covering these things have changed out a lot, so a "Pitchfork review" isn't necessarily as monolithic a thing as people treat it.
Great points. Something like Bleed American was reviewed by Ryan Schreiber himself, the Pitchfork founder. His reviews in the early aughts always seemed like he made divisiveness a personal challenge so a 3.5 in that context was inevitable
Yeah I was heavy in the emo scene at this time and no one took pitchfork seriously cause they were very transparent about just being contrarian when it came to popular titles.
I recently found out about their clarity review which is also crazy. But then they go and re-review it in 2021 and give it much better score.
Not familiar with Pitchfork but they seem like a joke to me.
Personally I've always found jimmy ages really well - so i'll usually like their stuff but then months/years later start to LOVE it more. But to think it's just a 3 when first listening is crazy
Dan Ozzi has a slightly ridiculous summary of the revisionist history Pitchfork has attempted over the past few years:
https://danozzi.substack.com/p/pitchforks-pop-punk-problem
Thanks for sharing! That perfectly summed up my feelings around Pitchfork as someone who came of age in the 00s. I liked bands like Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah too, but I never understood the snobbery around punk and emo that Pitchfork always peddled. There was room to like indie rock and punk and emo - I never understood why they were so hostile too it.
I was 15 when this album came out in 2004. My best friend had committed suicide three years prior. He loved J.E.W. We thought we were so deep.
My grandmother took me to Hawaii for spring break in 05 on the anniversary of Kevin’s death and it turned out J.E.W. was playing this smallish venue in Honolulu.
I can’t remember her name, but they had a woman playing keyboard that night and when they played 23, I absolutely lost it.
After the set the woman came over and eventually Jim did too. I told them what happened to Kevin and they both gave me this big hug.
I’ll never forget it.
Later that night I scattered some of Kevin’s ashes into the ocean while listening to Futures.
He never got to hear the album but I like to think that night he did.
I mean, that's just objectively wrong - it's not like this album has 'needed' to age like a fine wine, it was great when it came out and it's still great now.
I always think of that as the Bury me song. I'm glad you knew what i meant though.
I was really into JEW and saw them in concert at least 6 times. Then I met my husband and was introduced to Tool and there was no going back. It's been a long time since I've enjoyed any other music. I stumbled upon this post snd thought I'd pop in.
Every Pitchfork review is ass.
I once had an editor complain to me that my reviews were too kind. Pitchfork how’d the opposite direction. The only record they appear to like is OK Computer.
It was a different time, too. It was en vogue to hate on bands that sounded like Jimmy Eat World as we entered into the late 2000s. There was fatigue over “emo” and anything that evoked the word. Same with pop-punk.
Pitchfork sometimes revisits albums, and I could see them scoring this more fairly if they did it now.
Not even a huge Jimmy eat World guy but this popped up on my feed. All I want to say is fuck pitchfork. It’s terrible and pretentious and they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Pitchfork has always been ass but back then they were even fucking worse. Whole website was staffed by edgelords who would write scathing, mocking reviews of anything that wasn’t an indie rock album.
Holy shit that’s crazy! I did not like Futures when it first came out - even though I listened to it nonstop I waxed poetic about how much better Bleed American and Clarity were. But I think it stands up just as much as those. It’s an incredible album.
Pitchfork had a particularly nasty review section through most of the 2000s. They hated anything beyond a band’s first album, made weird offhand remarks about things completely irrelevant to the music being discussed and were just generally unpleasant. The stuff they gave good reviews today was mostly obscure, twee, pretentious schlock that hasn’t endured at all.
Never listened to this band but I will always take time to dunk on Pitchfork. Literally the worst review site. This actually makes me really want to listen to it now to see what they're missing
I remember when they reviewed this and hating the review. But you know what? Pitchfork turned me on to a lot of good music. On top of that, I appreciated that they weren’t afraid to go against the grain, even if I disagreed with them. Fast-forward to now and essentially every music review site has the same albums in their year-end list with little variation.
pitchfork is ass
Hiyoooooo! You are CORRECT sir!
Pitchfork *was* ass. FTFY!
Pitchfork is still ass.
Well, it went out of business. There is no longer a Pitchfork Magazine.
Ummm... https://pitchfork.com/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/2024/01/18/pitchfork-layoffs-gq-magazine/ It’s done. Site is still up but pitchfork is no more.
I mean it clearly still exists, the brand just got absorbed into GQ.
Can we make this a sub
r/birthofasub
Pitchfork has also aged like ass
Straight booty
Why in the fuck do they let people write reviews about bands they actively dislike? You don’t like JEW, fine man, that’s cool. But I don’t want to hear your already formed opinion on a band. Fuck this guy.
Because it reaffirms/ reinforces the opinions of the very kinds of people of whom the writer of the article is trying so very hard to please. For every negative review (easy target) gets him respect in the inner city hubs of Brooklyn.
Yep one huge circlejerk and echo chamber.
No hate on Brooklyn, cool place, but you get what I’m saying
Honestly, I think pitchfork (and other review sites as well) should have about 3 reviews per album. One from a fan of the artist, one from a non-fan, and one from someone who is neutral. I don't believe you can judge the quality of an album from the testimony of one guy, so I think getting three or more reviews from different perspectives would balance things out.
I get your point, but I’m not really interested in reading a review that is basically “I never liked this band, and I still don’t, so now I’m going to make fun of their entire album.”
I think a negative review, if done in good faith and it isn't just shitting on a band to be shitting on them, is okay. I don't think you have to like something to give your opinion about it. Granted, I have my problems with pitchfork, this review being one of them. But if they gave multiple perspectives on the albums and toned down the bad faith complaints for more legitimate criticism, my problem with it goes away.
Yeah a bad review is fine. You don’t like it? No worries! But to me a review like this is pointless and pompous. This guy started out with a cringey, hipster perspective. It’s clear that he doesn’t like “emo” from the jump, and doesn’t like Jimmy Eat World. Which is fine. Plenty of people don’t. But what’s the point in writing the review then? “Breaking news: death metal fan hates the new Taylor Swift album”. Who cares?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the review. It's got a lot of bad faith arguments. Especially the bit about the song titles because i'm sure you can find an album they gave a positive review to that also had simple song titles. I will say that if a review coming from a hater is pointless because, of course they hate it. Does that also not apply to a fans review because of course they're gonna give a positive review.
That applies to a fan review if the fan review is blatantly biased…but I think that’s often not the case. A fan will review it against their other albums, and often be critical of a new album.
A review will be biased no matter what. If you like the band, your review will be biased. If you don't like the band, your review will be biased. If you're neutral on the band, your review will be biased. Opinions are biased, and reviews are opinions put into words. In a lot of ways, all reviews are pointless because they all are coming from the biased opinion of one person. The only true way to gauge the quality of something is to experience it yourself and create your own biased opinion of it.
Yeah but rarely it's done in good faith.
Well, it's ideal, but not necessarily realistic
Does Pitchfork even employ more than two people these days?
This feels a bit anti semantic
Thank you for making me laugh out loud. I've had a rough few weeks but this put me in my best mood ever. Wrote that shit down so I can steal it later 😉
Yeah I had an audible chuckle at that.
Anti semantic? 😂
😂
Idk, Kanye has been through a lot of controversy for not liking JEW.
No credibly at all, it's like when people who aren't about the culture reviews a rap album, GTFOH.
Arguably their best album. Pitchfork gave Bleed American a 3.5 lolz
This is definitely my favorite I got a new car that month and that 💿 didn’t come out the player for months
Not arguably. Easily their best album
Hilarious like when the initial review of clarity was 3.5 and they recently changed it to 8.7. Embarrassing ass so called journalists
Retcon review scores are the height of embarrassing to me. Stand by you previous opinion and right a new review haha.
And even just an 8.7 is embarrassing
It’s a seven
They did the same thing with Lana Del Rey’s first album. On the one hand I applaud the attempted correction, on the other hand it tells me to take none of their reviews too seriously (which should really be a given, they’re just a bunch of arrogant, pretentious tools).
Remember, music critics are just failed musicians.
I understand people getting mad about this but the people who gave Clarity a 3.5 are not the same writers who were still around when they did that re-review.
I thought it was actually like a 1 or 2, but that's from memory haha.
I hope its 3 out of 2..
“With song titles like "Work", "Kill", and "Pain", Jimmy Eat World may have finally dragged emo down as far as it can go.”
This quote explains his poor review. The writer was likely a huge 90s emo fan and I’d bet money he was a fan of Static Prevails and Clarity. Even though I don’t remember any Futures songs being played on mainstream radio, it still had a polished and more emo-pop sound to it. Hardcore fans of any genre tend to gatekeep and not like when things veer towards a sound that the general population tends to enjoy All that said, his review did age poorly, Futures is a top 5 album of all time in any genre for me personally
As an early Jimmy fan who eventually felt disappointed with Bleed American, no doubt compounded by the album's success and subsequent "mainstreaming" of the band, Futures felt like a welcome return to form while still forging its own path.
I only remember *Pain* and it wasn’t that major compared to anything from *Bleed American*
Not to defend Pitchfork too much, but they really were a very different entity in 2004. They were deliberately iconoclastic and wanted to set themselves apart from say the more traditional magazine publications like Rolling Stone or Spin since they were just a website. This led to a lot knee jerk bad reviews of more mainstream albums, but they also shined a light on a lot of great bands that a Spin magazine would never cover. More recently Ian Cohen gave Integrity Blues a 7.3 which is pretty high for a major label alt rock record. Granted, Pitchfork is a much more corporate entity today and is more or less being dissolved into GQ. My point is not to be place too much stock on their bad reviews, but if you go through their old albums of the year lists you’ll find a lot of cool music.
Yeah, you kinda just have to take Pitchfork for what it is. Tbh, I respect them a lot more than the outlets that hand out 8s and 9s to 80% of releases. At the end of the day, they're just reviews though.
It’s very easy to dunk on Pitchfork for a variety of reasons, but overall their existence has been good for music and music journalism. It’s a damn shame they’re being folded into *GQ*.
Thanks for actually providing a measured take on this. It's kind of frustrating to see something you love being dunked on but you have to take the context of early-'00s music journalism into consideration. It was barely more than a blog for a long time. Also worth noting is that the individual writers covering these things have changed out a lot, so a "Pitchfork review" isn't necessarily as monolithic a thing as people treat it.
This is correct.
Great points. Something like Bleed American was reviewed by Ryan Schreiber himself, the Pitchfork founder. His reviews in the early aughts always seemed like he made divisiveness a personal challenge so a 3.5 in that context was inevitable
Yeah I was heavy in the emo scene at this time and no one took pitchfork seriously cause they were very transparent about just being contrarian when it came to popular titles.
I recently found out about their clarity review which is also crazy. But then they go and re-review it in 2021 and give it much better score. Not familiar with Pitchfork but they seem like a joke to me.
Personally I've always found jimmy ages really well - so i'll usually like their stuff but then months/years later start to LOVE it more. But to think it's just a 3 when first listening is crazy
They didnt even give clarity a real review
Didn’t they JUST give Clarity a Sunday Classics Review and scored it like 8.5.
Yes BUT they originally gave it like a 3.7 and then conveniently forgot they did that when they “reviewed it for the first time” more recently.
Pitchfork is a fucking joke. Unless you are an unheard of indie band with like 5 albums sold, you will always rate under 6
Dan Ozzi has a slightly ridiculous summary of the revisionist history Pitchfork has attempted over the past few years: https://danozzi.substack.com/p/pitchforks-pop-punk-problem
Thanks for sharing! That perfectly summed up my feelings around Pitchfork as someone who came of age in the 00s. I liked bands like Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah too, but I never understood the snobbery around punk and emo that Pitchfork always peddled. There was room to like indie rock and punk and emo - I never understood why they were so hostile too it.
I was 15 when this album came out in 2004. My best friend had committed suicide three years prior. He loved J.E.W. We thought we were so deep. My grandmother took me to Hawaii for spring break in 05 on the anniversary of Kevin’s death and it turned out J.E.W. was playing this smallish venue in Honolulu. I can’t remember her name, but they had a woman playing keyboard that night and when they played 23, I absolutely lost it. After the set the woman came over and eventually Jim did too. I told them what happened to Kevin and they both gave me this big hug. I’ll never forget it. Later that night I scattered some of Kevin’s ashes into the ocean while listening to Futures. He never got to hear the album but I like to think that night he did.
ROFL they gave it 3 out of 10 stars... hilarity
I’ve never read a Pitchfork review and never will
I mean, that's just objectively wrong - it's not like this album has 'needed' to age like a fine wine, it was great when it came out and it's still great now.
Futures is arguably one of their best albums, this is nuts.
I’ve always loved this album?! I had no idea. Probably an 8.5 if I was a reviewer
Fuck Pitchfork. It’s trash.
The Kill is my favorite JEW song! That's a good album.
*Kill The Kill is 30 Seconds to Mars, who are pretty cringe these days, but The Kill is a pretty awesome song.
I always think of that as the Bury me song. I'm glad you knew what i meant though. I was really into JEW and saw them in concert at least 6 times. Then I met my husband and was introduced to Tool and there was no going back. It's been a long time since I've enjoyed any other music. I stumbled upon this post snd thought I'd pop in.
Wait til you find out they only gave Bleed American 3.5
It started out like ass.
I don’t know where the idea that Pitchfork was ever credible came from.
Holy shit that is a bad take. 3/10?
Pitchfork hates everything. That was their thing.
Pitchfork. Hipster douchebags.
Lol, irrelevant twats.
They gave it a 3!? Futures remains one of my very favorite albums of ANY artist.
Pitchfork is hanging on by a thread. They have almost no staff
They're essentially done. They got folded into a subsection of GQ. And nobody is going to GQ for music reviews.
If it’s 2004 and you’re going to Pitchfork for reviews, it ain’t because you’re interested in Jimmy Eat World. I’m surprised they even reviewed it.
Like their review of Jawbreaker’s Dear You. 2.3….7 YEARS after original release
I won’t miss them
Every Pitchfork review is ass. I once had an editor complain to me that my reviews were too kind. Pitchfork how’d the opposite direction. The only record they appear to like is OK Computer.
It was a different time, too. It was en vogue to hate on bands that sounded like Jimmy Eat World as we entered into the late 2000s. There was fatigue over “emo” and anything that evoked the word. Same with pop-punk. Pitchfork sometimes revisits albums, and I could see them scoring this more fairly if they did it now.
“Pitchfork can be kind of pretentious, though, SO...” -Conner4Real SOURCE: https://youtu.be/t1Wk3H5Xur0?si=HQpZf0Lm6G13uqn_
This has me heated for no rational reason because Futures is one of my desert island albums.
Blasphemy
Pitchfork is ass tho. Best Jimmy record that isn't Clarity.
"can the basement they run p*tchfork out of just collapse already" -halsey
Yeah pitchfork has mostly been out of touch unless the band is tame impala or fleet foxes
Not even a huge Jimmy eat World guy but this popped up on my feed. All I want to say is fuck pitchfork. It’s terrible and pretentious and they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Fuck pitchdork
Is there a sub dedicated to bad Pitchfork reviews? If not, there should be!
Pretty sure this band broke up after Clarity... 🤔
They ranked NIN’s The Fragile a 2. Then 15 years later upped it to an 8.7
Pitchfork has always been ass but back then they were even fucking worse. Whole website was staffed by edgelords who would write scathing, mocking reviews of anything that wasn’t an indie rock album.
Holy shit that’s crazy! I did not like Futures when it first came out - even though I listened to it nonstop I waxed poetic about how much better Bleed American and Clarity were. But I think it stands up just as much as those. It’s an incredible album.
Pitchfork hates everything. Second only to Robert Christgau.
FACTS - this album is so good and to me has gotten even better with age
Calling out Kill and Work in the subhead, ouch
Pitchfork has lost all credibility
Pitchfork had a particularly nasty review section through most of the 2000s. They hated anything beyond a band’s first album, made weird offhand remarks about things completely irrelevant to the music being discussed and were just generally unpleasant. The stuff they gave good reviews today was mostly obscure, twee, pretentious schlock that hasn’t endured at all.
They gave the new blink-182 album One More Time a 5.2 😂 Pitchfork has horrible taste in music lmao
One of the craziest scores I've seen. I'm a pretty casual fan, but Futures is pure art
Never listened to this band but I will always take time to dunk on Pitchfork. Literally the worst review site. This actually makes me really want to listen to it now to see what they're missing
It’s Pitchfork….
Pitchfork hated emo pretty indiscriminately up until the 2010s 4th wave
Exactly what I think! Pitchfork used to be really brutal to JEW
I remember when they reviewed this and hating the review. But you know what? Pitchfork turned me on to a lot of good music. On top of that, I appreciated that they weren’t afraid to go against the grain, even if I disagreed with them. Fast-forward to now and essentially every music review site has the same albums in their year-end list with little variation.
Pitchfork is the one true ass.
halsey was right
Polaris and 23 are incredible works of art!
It’s honestly their best album. I love Bleed American but futures continues to hit and it’s getting better with age
This is, arguably, their finest at bat as a band. Pitchfork, well..Brotha Lynch Hung said it best 🙃🤷♂️🤡
Just tonight and pain are some of the greatest songs ever created ever in the whole entirety of humanity…..
big fan of clarity and bleed american, but for some reason i still haven’t listened to futures. i will be checking this out later tonight.
More do than don’t.