May 3, 2006
Question Time: A Pitchfork Dismemberment
This past Sunday, celebrated Washington Post music writer Jay Dot Freedom of the Lake wrote up a superb article on Ryan Schreiber, who, while deeply contemplating farm implements some years ago, hit upon the idea for the sine qua non online guide to the indie rock universe—Pitchfork Media. Launched from the Minneapolis home of his folks, Schreiber’s baby has since become something of a kingmaker. Cluttered with inside jokes and boasting writing several degrees more inscrutable than the untranslated Mahabharata, the site straddles the indie landscape like a colossus, wielding an influence that can make or break a band.
In relating the story of Pitchfork’s rise to prominence, Jay Dot Freedom of the Lake dwells upon one incident in particular that is of interest to area rock fans: the now infamous 0.0 rating bestowed by Pitchfork upon former Dismemberment Plan frontman Travis Morrison’s solo joint, Travistan. In the article, Morrison describes the Pitchfork review as having a near instantaneous, catastrophic effect on the way the record was received, bitterly alluding to the fickle herd mentality Pitchfork brings out of its readers:
"Up until the day of the review, I'd play a solo show, and people would be like, 'That's our boy, our eccentric boy.' Literally, the view changed overnight...I could tell people were trying to figure out if they were supposed to be there or not…The review isn't the story. The reaction to it is. The seriousness with which everyone takes Pitchfork is kind of mind-boggling."
All of which begs a simple question: Did Travistan really deserve to get a 0.0 rating? Whether you think Pitchfork’s ten-points-to-the-tenth-of-a-point rating scale to be sensible or asinine, getting tagged with the Big Nil seems like a particularly awesome punishment. One would imagine that the sort of recording that rightfully deserves being assigned the null set would have to be a record of music with either outwardly evil intent—like an album of music written by zombie clones of Leni Riefenstahl—or an album responsible for literal, bodily harm—like Liz Phair’s eponymous 2003 record, which was pressed by underaged baby seals in a Burmese sweatshop, just like every record produced by The Matrix.
Travistan, a quirky, basement-tape style recording with deeply weird ruminations on coins and the most hummable tune about getting whanged in the mouth you’re likely to ever hear, is certainly no consensus fave. But still…a 0.0? Really? Truly? We want to hear from you on this matter. Did Travis Morrison deserve this ultimate beatdown, or was our native son unfairly ‘forked?
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"getting whanged in the mouth"
HA!
Pitchfork has given much more objectively unlistenable albums 5+ ratings; so yes, unfairly forked over.
Travis got the spork. New bands take a while to find their sound and figure things out, and most bands get to have their first efforts largely ignored, for better or worse. Travis is all about trying different things, and this new experiment didn't exactly catch on. After the sucess of the DPlan, a new beginging wasn't what people wanted to hear. The Plan wasn't built in a day though--they were all over the place in their early years-- they didn't pop out of the womb fully formed. Prior to the album, kids were showing up giddy like they would for Dplan shows or a sidewalk taping of Good Morning America or something. This was kind of like a Modern Lovers to Jonathon Richmond solo switch that left people scratching their heads. Travis will figure it out. Setbacks have a way of either strengthening one's resolve or leading to a drinking problem. I, for one, want to hear Travis get pissed off and go Colbert on the indie mafia and rip the whole crowd a new one rather than write songs about the orca or whatever. This experience may help him stay grounded and humble. One thing stands out from this period of his endeavors though--Travis' acoustic cover of Ludacris' "What's your fantasy" is amazing. I can't wait to hear what comes next.
I have a really hard time taking a 0.0, though, esp. considering '04 was the same year PM gave Phantom Planet a 7.3. (Apples to oranges, sure, but seven-point-three, people. Mgod.)
Travistan is a dope album. And people do take Pitchfork way too seriously. Sometimes I miss the days before the inter-web showed up to tell us what rocks and what sucks.
"Setbacks have a way of either strengthening one's resolve or leading to a drinking problem."
Yes! Best! So true. My approach is: a little from column A...a little from column B...
The 0.0 was goofy & unwarranted. I like the record and think the best parts are as good as good Plan tracks. The bigger issue is the persuasion stick bandied about by Pitchfork -- people are sheep and it makes indierock an paradox. Or is that an oxymoron? I get them confused.
I've always seen the 0.0 as an expression of disappointment on P-fork's part more than the hateful, career-damaging harangue it's become. I've heard from others - and Travis - that even the P-fork staffers were surprised to discover the influence they wielded after they dropped this bomb and Travis started having shows cancelled. I can see why people would be annoyed by some things on the record, but I got essentially the same buzz off it that I got off the last couple Dis Plan records. Is it as good as those? Not really, but in my view, "Travistan" was a continual part of the evolution of Travis as an artist, for better or worse, and hardly deserved zero points. Whatever that point system means anyway.
Travistan is a truly brilliant album (AP - people that actually know something about music - gave it a 5 out of 5). Pitchfork is a joke, comprised entirely of people who were dweebs in high school and are desperately trying to seem cool. Someone who is okay with being a quirky dweeb (like Travis) is offensive to the Pitchfork ideal. And the people that follow pitchfork reviews like lemmings are an embarrassment to the concept of "indie."
Travistan is a truly brilliant album (AP - people that actually know something about music - gave it a 5 out of 5). Pitchfork is a joke, comprised entirely of people who were dweebs in high school and are desperately trying to seem cool. Someone who is okay with being a quirky dweeb (like Travis) is offensive to the Pitchfork ideal. And the people that follow pitchfork reviews like lemmings are an embarrassment to the concept of "indie."
I love Travistan. I was sort of bummed that the last time I saw Travis at the Black Cat, he and the Hellfires didn't play more off of it. Like most things hipster, you have to take Pitchfork with a tub of Morton's.
js - your argument makes no sense. Pitchfork gave excellent reviews to d-plan albums, especially Emergency & I (warranted in my opinion). So, they give "quirky dweebs" their props. Did Travis deserve the 0, not really. Was the album any good - I think Travis himself in that J Free article on Sunday seemed to think that it may have been best not to release it (I thought it was not awesome).
However, it is a matter of taste. I like to read reviews on the site, and have been doing so for a good 7-8 years. I agree on occasion, disagree on occasion.
People need to remember that this is what one pretentious art school kid in the midwest thinks about the album. Form your own opinion.
And, for the record, hopefully the d-plan gets back together (I miss those shows).
I personally think Emergency and I is horrible, but I've never heard Travistan. However, I don't see why people give Pitchfork so much creedence. Half the time their reviews are barely about the music at all, it's about the artists' image or what their fans are like or whatever. Plus they write like a bunch of snobby know-it-alls.
Also, I like how you call him (or her?) Jay Dot Freedom of the Lake, that made me laugh
Holy crapballs andrew, emergency & I is an awesome album! never heard travistan though.
I'd rather get 0.0 than anything between 0.1 and 5.0. It implies spectacular failure that only a great artist screwing up royally can achieve. A 2.3 tells me that artist would be terrible even if he did hit his mark.
The infamous 0.0 rating was harsh, but what has amazed me is that clearly the writers were rating it as die-hard fans of the D-plan. P'fork were clearly lovers from E&I through Change, and wrote out of disappointment. I think it's near-sighted for folks to criticize the 0.0 without trying to wrap their head around the context, especially now that it's history. The review was like if Pete Townshend put out a rap record. Most regular readers took the 0.0 as hyperbole; a 2.6 or 3.14159 would have been much harsher. Personally, I think the record takes risks and deserves some credit for that, but, well, I won't ever listen to it again. (That said, the last T.Mo set at the Black Cat was ABSOLUTELY fantastic. T has reigned in his tendency to do everything all at once in every song, Fiery Furnaces style, and his crue are tight as hellfighters and right on target.) But the argument about the 0.0 is moot. Those days are over. Now everything is a 6.3, the reviews aren't as mean or as clever, and everything has become all too predictable. Moreover, P'fork isn't the problem, the problem is that we live in a believer culture, where people seek out a kingmaker. P'fork has a regular, repeatable formula, and it's branded itself quite well. They shouldn't be criticized because too many people can't think for their god damned selves.
Rizz - I just don't like his voice, I couldn't get past it. that album was the first I'd heard it
It should be noted that Weezer's "Make Believe" received a 0.4. I find it hard to believe that any album could be worse than that. Maybe "Make Believe" rerecorded with nothing but bongos and moogs?
Pitchfork doesn't have any more credibility than any other site on the Web, so people need to stop taking them seriously. Their reviews sometimes are so off base and downright weird. Look up the review for Beck's "Guero" and you'll see what I'm talking about. (I'm too lazy to link). However, I must say I enjoy Pitchfork's news briefs. I'll give them that much.
there are other great options like prefixmag.com tinymixtapes.com turntablelab.com (also a store)
popmatters.com adequacy.net. i'm a little obsessive
Pitchfork isn't the only one that didn't like it:
http://www.popmatters.com/music/reviews/m/morrisontravis-travistan.shtml
"This is a record in unmerciful disarray."
His foray into rapping, doing a cover of "Around the Way Girl" was just...
He's also let his pro-Iraq war views known which has turned a number people away.
Absolute nerd power corrupts absolutely nerdily, and I don't think they could resist the chance to push it a little bit.
"All of which begs a simple question:"
Um, it doesn't beg the question, it *raises* the question. Begging the question means something else.
See http://begthequestion.info for details.
I agree with Mooseknuckle (in part because I just wanted to say that), I thought the 0.0 was to be taken as a relative judgement in the context of the Dismemberment Plan's catalogue. Also, I think Pitchfork is mean because SOMEONE HAS GOT TO BE MEAN. Otherwise, who cares when you're nice? These are dark times for our culture, as it slides ever further into the aesthetic hell of calculated, mass-produced emotional manipulation at the expense of art, and good for Pitchfork for standing up and saying to the world "This is unmitigated crap" at a time when few else with the requisite amplification are willing or able.
in a more specfic rant, today pitchfork gave spankrock's cd a 6.5 or something close to that, and it unquestionably deserves an 18.3million
People who know me well know that I am always beating this record to death, but for the sake of discussion, I'll point out that the record I always hold out as the standard-bearer for inflicting actual physical and psychological harm is They Were Wrong So We Drowned by the Liars, which is pure and unadulterated excrement. It's the only record that ever made my wife back out of the room, angry and panicked, telling me to "Make that stop, NOW!"
Pitchfork, naturally, gives it a 6.3 (though, going back to Mooseknuckle's comment, maybe the in-house term for it at Pitchfork HQ is "The 6.3") and the review itself is just horrible. The first three grafs are loaded with pathetic Fleischer-style spin as the reviewer desperately attempts to build this crumbly facade of "I'm one of those few, great people who GET this band" in front of the obvious truth: which is that by design or by accident, the band totally screwed the pooch and delivered mad suck-o-tash.
I've read several pitchfork reviews. They are so ignorant of music made prior to 1996 and have made so many factual errors in that regard that they are roundly dismissed by people outside of college. I don't know why they still exist. They don't know what they're talking about when they open their mouths about music.
Don
I understand that PF was grading Travistan relative to their expectations, but the, er, point of having a point system is ostensibly an objective measurement of albums. Is that pretty stupid? Sure. See David Cross's dismantling of PF.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/features/artistlists/c/cross_david-05/
It's fundamentally unfair to judge out of disappointment that a SOLO artist's album doesn't sound like that of his previous band, or doesn't follow that band's artistic trajectory. As far as judging Travistan--Travis himself said he wanted it to be a "trainwreck album", an opportunity to just throw stuff out there for fun and to get grounded. Lots of artists do it. If you judge it from that perspective, it's far from a 0.0. But I don't think the kids at P-fork are savvy enough to get it.
http://www.subpop.com/features/pdork/
regardless of what you think of the rating for "Travistan," I think that review is well thought out and carefully written. As Mooseknuckle said, they were clearly fans of Travis and of the Plan. They just didn't like the record. You won't find many reviews as long as the one for "Travistan" on Pitchfork, nor do I think that they pulled any unfair punches on the record or Travis personally. It wasn't NEARLY as meanspirited as some of the things that have been written on that website.
I think Pitchfork's review was ridiculous and deliberate, and the numerical score was intended simply to make a statement. An asinine, pompous hipster statement. Travistan wasn't as cool as Emergency and I.
Now, I do think the album was disjointed and that Travis is still finding his voice as a solo artist. But 0.0?! Even when the review lists a couple of minor good points about the album? Isn't that a bit contradictory?
God help the poor, desperate scenesters who rely on this arrogant, pretentious writing to decide what's cool.
Much like all the -ist websites, Pitchfork is an elitist rag that doesn't offer any real incite into the actual review of an album. People should pay less attention to critics and more attention to what they hear. Music is about what sounds enjoyable to each person, not what some website tells you to like.
ummmm ... why was this an article on dcist? I don't what crying about how over a year ago travis morisson got panned by a pretentious indie rag has to do with anything relating to dc (except morrison's ties here, however, why not cover this back then?)
c'mon guys!
That's wierd, Dan. I don't read and comment on websites like Pitchfork that I hate.
Why are you commenting here?
Joe, to answer your question, reading du Lac's article just made us interested in what our readers had to say about that review of Morrison. It does revisit the past, but so far the chatback's been pretty interesting. Also, we wanted to direct anyone who hasn't read du Lac's article to it now, it's a good read.
I think that Pitchfork's "influence" is being exaggerated here. Anyone who gives a shit about music enough to make it through their arduous reviews isn't going to let an arbitrary number make or break their interest in a band. The reviews of Travistan were universally bad, and I think that a cumulative negative response to the album was probably the result of the canceled shows.
RCR--maybe, but I doubt it. Pitchfork has a reputation as a starmaker (or at least Band of the Week Maker), so it makes sense to blame them for having the opposite effect. Don't you know kids who consult P-fork before brushing their hair? I do.
On an unrelated note, the post-Plan shows were still standing-room only, for the most part. The Galaxy Hut shows had a similar vibe to some of the Plan shows--people singing along, getting into it. It's just so weird to me that shows got cancelled at all.
I don't really get how a Pitchfork comes to be in the first place. You know, distributive power of the Internets and all that—for no other medium does one monolithic site control the criticism. It's baffling.
And wtf with the tenth of the point? Do they round? Maybe The Sounds' dying to say this to you is in fact a solid, indisputable 7.14, but the cover gives it that one-hundredth point nudge?
When Pitchforkmedia gave the Fiery Furnaces' Blueberry Boat a stellar review, I figured they were a site that was created simply to provide good reviews to their Williamsburg neighbors. Talk about pole-vaulting over an anthill.
As if that wasn't bad enough, they gave We Are Scientists a 6.6 or something. It's easily one of the best albums of the past year or so.
I always took the decimal place as one quarter extra precision, three quarters satire on the point system. It's the joke that keeps on giving, its humor renewed every time someone, in all seriousness, complains about it. Because, you know, it's an objective representation of a subjective judgement. You can bitch about the writing all you want, but if a review isn't art in its own right, what the hell good is it? It HAS to be art in order to communicate what it is expressly designed and intended to communicate.
And the Sounds' cover is worth WAY more than a hundredth of a point. Way more.
Right, I got that wrong. What if the album was good enough to bank the cover another point. . . .
This is what they had to say about Coldplay's Parachutes when it came out:
"Parachutes is ultimately a promising debut for Coldplay, if by "promising," I mean, "promising them a windfall of cash and international popularity." If nothing else, it's harmless and pretty. Unfortunately, it's nothing else. If that's what you look for in your music, by all means, go for it. If you want substance, I suggest moving on."
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/c/coldplay/parachutes.shtml
maybe they have a more complicated system where they rank a few factors, then put them together or average them, like some video game sites do. That still wouldn't explain a 0.0 though.
Man, this happened so long ago. Aren't we a little slow to notice the news on this one?
Oh shit! The Pope just died!! This is HUGE!
Uhm...and yet the reason behind this post was explained very recently, while we're on the subject of being slow to notice.
To me the most interesting thing about the article was its juxtaposition with the article about Rembrandt inside the "Arts" section. On the left, on page N4, you have the great Dutch master. On the right, on page N5, this non-entity who I guarantee most of the Post's readers had never heard of. What it says that these two "cultural figures" found themselves side-by-side in the newspaper one Sunday morning I have no idea. I just know that it does say something. Something tells me the editors of the Arts section have a pronounced sense of irony.
"I've always seen the 0.0 as an expression of disappointment on P-fork's part more than the hateful, career-damaging harangue it's become."
I agree with this. When the album came out, I didn't buy it right away. I read the P-Fork review and when I bought it, I immediately understood the "0.0" as an expression of frustration, not of hatred.
I was so disappointed in Travistan for two reasons: First, The Plan's final two albums were both Desert-Island faves; Second, every track on Travistan seemed like some lame, half-assed 4-track joke that he wrote in about 5 minutes. When you're involved with Emergency and Change, two of the best indie rock albums ever made, the bar is CONSIDERABLY raised.
As for the idea that people only liked *sad, depressing Travis*, I say BS. The problem wasn't the wierd songs about coins and orcas; it was that the wierd songs about coins and orcas WEREN'T GOOD.
That said, I'm eagerly awaiting Travis's next album, and I hope it's way better than Travistan, because the man is very talented.
We forgave Lou Reed for Metal Machine Music; we can forgive Travis Morrison for Travistan.
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The judge who put coded messages in his Da Vinci Code plagiarism trial ruling has written another...
0.0 indicated to me that there is clearly something else, other than music reviewing, going on here. The same is true of Pitchfork's unbridled adoration of the Dismemberment Plan. Having some experience with Travis myself, my bet is that he probably slept with one of the Pitchfork dude's girlfriends and this was the payback that he probably deserved.
On the other hand, Travis Morrison is an acquired taste, best in small doses, and the fact that his musical contribution in the Dismemberment Plan was so popular is testiment mostly to the chemistry of that band. In that co