Hey there, welcome to issue #65 of Crow’s Nest. Thank you as always for reading; unfortunately I ran out of steam to get this out like I usually do on Sunday. So it goes.
I’m sure you, a subscriber to a small newsletter of (mostly) music recommendations, have seen the news that Pitchfork is being moved under the GQ brand at Condé Nast, and that half of the staff has been laid off. At the time of writing, it’s still not clear what that means for the public-facing side of the brand moving forward. The namesake music festival will go on in Chicago this summer, and it will otherwise presumably take a little time to move things on the backend, the combination hopefully making the flagship public event less awkward without the disappearance of its public face. A since-deleted tweet from a Condé Nast insider claimed Pitchfork had both the highest page count metrics and lowest resource utilization at the company, making Anna Wintour and whomever her advisors are’s decision feel even more like a sucker punch lacking justification.
Nobody seems confident this move will be good for music journalism as whole; Defector’s writeup is practically an obituary for the genre. For all of its faults, of which there have been plenty, the site consistently and fairly prominently brought attention to worlds of other artists you might not consider or otherwise be aware of, and frequently gave them a thoughtful examination that many others outlets would not or could not. Even if you consider yourself a close follower of music, Pitchfork regularly found space for things you’d never consider, such as experimental Vietnamese electronic music, connect the dots on “Shitpost Modernism” across multiple genres, dig out an old record for fresh, detailed examination, or otherwise bring attention to music on your periphery you otherwise might not encounter. It’s easy to roll your eyes at someone whose taste seems too strongly defined by the ‘Best New Music’ label or concernedly encounter a rant based on a review score—and really, you should avoid taking any number they publish too seriously, and form your own opinion on the subject independent of their suggestions. But the site’s willingness to avoid reflexive agreement and put weird or unexpected things in front of you, especially as the algorithmic enclosure of social media continues to give anything that wasn’t a known quantity during the Obama administration only the most vaporous of attention, made it essential to keep an eye on.
Ultimately, part of what might have doomed Pitchfork is the perception of it as a publication by overly judgmental white male millennials. While never fully true, the publication did expand its orbit especially after first coming under the Condé Nast umbrella, and its reluctance to issue free passes or gentleman’s C’s to the artists they examine did feel commendable, much to the chagrin of insecure stans and poptimists. Nevertheless, a well-chronicled past of arrogant dismissiveness and pithy judgment, crystalized by a Wikipedia chronicle of so-called greatest hits and seemingly fueled by coffeeshop preening and irony-poisoned envy, can be hard to shake off, especially when the complaint department is busy and the target demographic is not ascendant.
Assuming the site is fully subsumed into a vertical in GQ next to listicles of this season’s hottest $200 pants or whatever the heck it is GQ publishes, what comes to replace Pitchfork is likely almost certain to be less robust and rigorous. While the short content dripfeed continues with minimal impediment at the time I write this, apparently features and other longform articles are not being commissioned. That’s definitely not a good sign of things to come.
I’m not sure there is another publication capable of stepping up to take Pitchfork’s place. From what I can recall of some of the current places I keep an eye on, Stereogum is reader-subscription dependent and fairly open about the financial constraints of doing more. The Quietus is in an even more precarious financial condition with a toothpicks, bubble gum and duct tape website. Other music publications are already shells of themselves or are similarly constrained from doing the same depth and breadth of work.
Much has been made about email newsletters or other blog-like offerings as the next outpost for music writing as a genre. As I know fairly well, many of these are passion projects which fail to generate salary-like revenue, and lack the institutional structure to continue when the person or handful of people behind them run out of time or energy. I only have myself as an editor, so I lack the feedback and dialogue that can help me grow as a writer or put out more than a few paragraphs on a subject before running out of juice. I don’t make money on this, and quite obviously lack the self-promotional ability to attract a large audience which might allow me to go into further detail or focus on it more during my free time. The idea of me having a budget to report out anything in detail, or getting paid to examine an album’s lyrics and thematic content in detail, remains a somewhat abstract concept far out of reach.
I can only hope the fired writers from Pitchfork and other un(der)employed writers out there might be able to band together and create a new publication, like the mostly sports writers at Deadspin did with Defector Media. I’m not optimistic though. Joshua Minsoo Kim, who helms Tone Glow, funds it through his work as a middle-school science teacher, nominally paying contributors on principle, and TG often has lengthy gaps between issues as a result. In a relatively recent interview, Phillip Sherburne, an electronic music writer and editor who did not get cut from Pitchfork, stated he works only part-time for Pitchfork and has always needed side gigs or hustles to his main work to make ends meet; simultaneous to the Pitchfork announcement he tweeted about considering taking on a deliveryman side gig. For as reputable as those brands are in music writing, and however many (helping) hands there may be to try getting a replacement up, being able to do so without handing over influence to the fickle whims of a venture capitalist seems unlikely, though I’ll gladly support such an effort if it emerges. (Perhaps they could call it Intonation, and see if Mike Reed would be able to continue running a music festival in Chicago each July based on its curatorial influence.)
A friend texted me the news about Pitchfork, noting it as the “End of an era”. That seems insufficient in scope to describe what’s happened and what will happen without it. It is hard for me to imagine a future without Pitchfork in it, considering how influential it has been to my taste and, consequently, my interests and worldview. Attending the namesake festival for the first time in 2011 was incredibly formative to me as a teenager. It was one of the first cultural outposts where I felt like I could consistently find intriguing music that felt like ‘mine’, independent to an extent from others. (While I eventually learned that the sphere was still fairly big and there was a whole lot more depth than even that, the existence of worlds far from radio pop and rock trash that were more than a couple people’s niche interest was quite the revelation to my fairly sterile suburban world.) Would I have changed my opinion on dance music and electronic music as a whole had they not lavished praise and attention on Andy Stott’s Luxury Problems?
While I feel I’ve moved on from considering the site as my primary source of information on music, that’s only because I’ve subsumed it and found pathways leading out from it into other avenues. I’ve had my gripes about it for years, particularly in some asides that rubbed me the wrong way, the occasional press release regurgitation fluff I believed they were above circulating, and yes, the occasional review or ranking I vehemently disagreed with it. I’ve felt a lot of this was due to the lack of seriousness with which I perceived Pitchfork was taking itself, when it could be doing better. I’ve occasionally longed for the long-rumored paywall to finally appear, and free the publication from needing to pad itself with clicks and eyeballs to keep things running. Since the announcement, though, I’ve realized it’s also because it was irreplaceable in what it was doing for music. For all the moments where I felt Pitchfork was kinda crappy, I don’t know how much more crappy things might get without it.
Pretty much since I first discovered the Minneapolis Uranium Club Band, I’ve been waiting for their next album to be announced, and thank god that’s now happened. The opener to new album Infants Under The Bulb sees the post-punkers flesh out their lo-fi sound—there’s a horn section!—while remaining as iconoclastic as ever. There’s no piano-wire sharp jangle on this track, though I imagine that’s waiting just over the horizon on track 2; a wide-eyed proclamation like “I want to trade sex for information!” assures you you’re in the right spot. March 1st can’t come soon enough.
If you follow small-room Chicago rock shows closely, you’ve likely seen the courts pop on a bill seemingly every other week or so. I’ve yet to see them live, but the explosive mix of 2000s indie, psych rock, shoegaze and emo they play on this record makes me want to correct that ASAP. Which, thankfully, should be this Thursday at Schubas, where they open a 4-band bill headlined by Cruel, another post-punk group on the ascent in this city whose short-and-savory recent EP kicks off an new tape imprint from Fire Talk records and expands the Meat Wave/Negative Scanner niche. I know nothing about the other 2 groups, Shoobie and Diet Lite, on that bill, and frankly I’m keeping it that way to see what is shaping up to be an excellent evening.
A lot of experimental efforts fail at being intriguing records past the first listen, their abstraction often smearing out the appeal. I feel confident saying this record by or best offer doesn’t fit that mold, however. The sound is quite thick and possessed with a certain je ne sais quoi despite frequent uncertainty about where things are (going) within. Singer-guitarist Grace Schmidhauser mostly whispers but also has a bit of a snarl that makes vocalists like Adrienne Lenker and Mitski quite compelling, though I imagine there’s little overlap in their fans. Magik Markers seems the most obvious touchpoint, along with a bunch of acts on Constellation; the duo tag Sonic Youth and Hop Along on Bandcamp, and I think I hear a bit of Yo La Tango’s droning in there too. I have a feeling I’m going to be spending a lot more time with this one.
This might be my favorite song of the year so far. A gorgeous, low-lit, piano-driven house number from a producer always worth keeping an eye on even as she ascends into bigger rooms. I’m chronically single so I can’t claim this with any certainty but I imagine dancing with your lover to this in a candlelit room would be among the most intensely romantic experiences one could have.
Philadelphia’s Siltbreeze Records, run by Tom Lax, has been in the business for decades, yet still seems to not entirely understand the internet. It’s kinda charming if frustrating as someone who doesn’t collect much physical media. Lax brought The Dead C to the American underground’s attention though so it will take a lot more than feeling like a joke or an afterthought to make me look away. Citing some names I’ve never heard of as references to this South Island electronics project that runs in similar circles as Morley, Yeats and Russell—one of those references being a refrigerator brand—this record was recorded a decade ago but still sounds decent. Imagine Mika Vainio making a pair of experimental waltzes across two sides of a full 12” slab of wax and you’re there. A great record for those open-minded about groove.
While Vainio is perhaps the most well-known name in Finnish electronic music and Omit probably isn’t Finnish, the history of Finnish electronic music extends farther back than him. Sakho Recordings released this compilation of early electronic music from composer Osmo Lindeman. A lot of them are not as complicated as later works could get, though the tone quality of many of these pieces is utterly phenomenal even by contemporary standards. I don’t have much more to say about this other than that my laptop’s autocorrect really doesn’t like Finnish names.
A great set of cosmic synth music here. Imagine if Caterina Barbieri was a little more grounded, or some of the stuff pioneered by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Fragmented, cyclical, related yet separate, things assembling into a construction from the constituent parts and back, a great record to get lost in.
A lot of times when people talk about innovative or dub-derived bass playing on post-punk records, I have to admit I don’t really hear it. Like, I should probably familiarize myself with some of Jah Wobble’s work before he plays the Hideout this summer (shh), but perhaps a lot of it has been so consumed and normalized by other music to come that it doesn’t strike me as original. That’s definitely not the case with this record out on Mangel, which see Guilio Erasmus fracture and reconstruct the bass in myriad ways I’ve not encountered elsewhere on top of exploded drum machine work. Imagine some of the hypnagogic material coming out of Australia thickened up more and you get the idea. Even if you think a lot of lo-fi post-punk or minimal wave tropes have long since run their course, this one might surprise you and be an inspiration if you play on the low end. Very fitting cover art too.
Somehow it slipped past me to include this in the last issue despite my love of it; a few week’s further lateness isn’t too bad. While I don’t have much of an ear for lyrics, the often total unintelligibility of hardcore vocals is alienating to me. I get that it’s more about the overall energy and liveness, but the lack of home listening enjoyment is a minus in my book. This record moves at hardcore’s pace but does have the qualities of playing on loop that I enjoy—imagine Spread Joy or Cel Ray dialing down the eclecticism and dialing up the aggression and you’ve got it. And the vocals are crystal-clear and perfectly understandable … provided you speak German.
I really enjoyed Squid’s first album Bright Green Field. Last year’s O Monolith, not so much, as it lacked a lot of the anxious propulsion I latched onto. I was concerned the different direction was a bit permanent—not enough to not get a ticket to their upcoming tour, but you know what I mean when one of your favorites switches up their sound in a way you don’t like—but this one-off that didn’t make the last album thankfully puts those feelings to rest. And helps you recall those anxieties all over again.
Dance music: there’s a lot of it out there, which is good, because there’s always more to discover no matter how deep you dive, but is also kinda bad (?), because a lot of the good stuff is easy to lose track of and/or not get its proper due, to say nothing about the mountains of fine but not good or bad stuff out there. House music lifer Fred P is one of those names to know, overlook, get lost in, add to the proverbial pile, etc. His bio notes 11 albums plus a deep well of other singles. Volume 2 of 12 of his ‘DJs ARE THE ORIGINAL EXPATs’ series, which is meant to be monthly but is on volume 7 two months in (?), was pointed out to me recently and seems as good as any other starting point into his catalog. ‘LG Fantasy (Early Edit)’ has a nicely off-center pitch-shifted whistle motif, and a chopped/echoed vocal over a solid house shuffle. ‘Time Well Spent’ eschews the trickery for a stealth-wealth piano-house number centered around half-note piano chords. I kinda feel bad knowing how much more is surely in his catalog that I probably won’t get to, but such is the bounty of music.
Here’s some word salad that either means nothing or quite a lot to you: DFA Records has tracked down and released a 1986 dance track from Louisiana jazz saxophonist Dickie Landry, and commissioned Optimo’s JD Twitch to remix it. If you recall his free jazz records that Unseen Worlds reissued a bit over a year ago, it can hard to imagine this coming from the same person, but such is the versatility and range of Landry, to say nothing about him introducing zydeco to Paul Simon. A weird record but one who’s central message has stood the test of time since it was first put to tape during the Reagan administration.
‘Deep’ as a dance music descriptor is mostly associated with house music—see the Fred P entry above—but I find it hard not to apply it to this techno EP by Berlin’s Marco Shuttle. I’m used to appending dub as a descriptor, and certainly the understatedness of this record has some similarity to Basic Channel, but the energy within and the constant propulsion and mutation to it separates it from that canon. Not that my home speakers are tinny, but I imagine it sounds even better on a proper sound system in a warehouse space under a minimalist light show.
Finally, a good piece of noise rock which lives up to its name for how it can make you feel. In a decent enough way, I suppose.
Uhh so I had written a longer closing to this yesterday when I was feeling more down about some things going on in my life, but I still need to hear back about some of it and don’t feel like disclosing that even vaguely here now. I went to turn on my SAD lamp towards the end of the workday today when it was still fairly sunny out, so things are definitely changing as they continue on. Guess I’ll see what happens with that. In the meantime, thanks for reading, and I hope you found something within that you enjoyed. We’ll see what I bring up in a few weeks.