Although this place hates being like Pitchfork...

[Ptommydski]

They didn't even look past the mainstream for rock, frankly.

[elizaknowswhatshesfor]

They didn't even look past the mainstream for ANYTHING THAT DOESN'T FIT A REALLY SPECIFIC MO, frankly.

[Tom]

I looked through the list and was sorely tempted to just go ahead and insert my own selections whenever something by The Streets came up.

Every time I hear that guy's voice I though up a little in my mouth.

[KvP]

They didn't even look past the mainstream for rock, frankly.

Eh, not to be that guy that takes flippancy seriously, but hasn't Pitchfork defined what mainstream is for awhile now? Because that's sort of a ridiculous statement considering actual mainstream stuff (as defined by top 40 radio) is generally absent from this list as far as rock is concerned. Nickelback is not here, nor is Bruce Springsteen. Actually I haven't listened to top 40 radio in awhile, so maybe they've been playing Antlers and Arcade Fire and I just don't know what I'm talking about.

Really I'm going to have to agree with Brett and say that the genre that's most "mainstream" on their list is hip hop, as it largely consists of big hitmakers, particularly Jay-Z and Lil' Wayne. The farthest out they go is Ghostface Killah.

[Johnny C]

yeah this list is "big indie." it's all about perspective.

[tender]

I still can't believe they left off Twin Spiders from the top 200.

[KharBevNor]

Actually I haven't listened to top 40 radio in awhile, so maybe they've been playing Antlers and Arcade Fire and I just don't know what I'm talking about.

I dunno about the US but a lot of this stuff gets played on the radio in the UK.

[Reed]

I haven't heard the Antlers, but I have heard one of the more popular stations out here play Arcade Fire.

[Alex C]

Top 40 radio isn't necessarily that great of a yardstick of mainstream awareness anyway since we're not in a world with only 3 tv channels anymore; between cable and the internet, you don't have to make a splash on the Tonight Show just to get your name out there. The Billboard 200 by its very nature can only show us a very thin slice of consensus.

[KharBevNor]

Even on last.fm, which necessarily only shows a tiny slice of people from around the world, Arcade Fire have 1,155,590 unique listeners. They're pretty goddamn huge.

[KvP]

When I think "mainstream" I'm thinking of acts that book arenas, or are the type of bands that sound like they want to. Off the top of my head - Green Day, U2, Oasis, Jay-Z, Kanye West (who's on the list, isn't he?) the most recent American Idol winners, etc. etc.

Arcade Fire I think is probably in the same position R.E.M. found themselves in around the time of the late 80's - They were the most popular college radio act in America but it didn't quite fit to call them "mainstream". I mean, Springsteen likes them and Neon Bible was pretty popular but they haven't quite made their Automatic For the People yet. I'm wondering if it's even possible for a band to cross over from indie appeal to the big leagues the way they used to - The majors are pretty dumb at utilizing the internet. Otherwise, you can tell me that Animal Collective and BSS are mainstream but I really don't think they are - tastemakers just talk endlessly about them, and after awhile it seems like they're institutions when they're not. Feist has a bigger profile now than BSS proper does.

Radiohead's at #1, and they are admittedly pretty mainstream at this point. They've got a huge cult, but they're still big figures.

Even on last.fm, which necessarily only shows a tiny slice of people from around the world, Arcade Fire have 1,155,590 unique listeners.

Man, I don't know if Last.fm is the best gauge for audience. If your numbers jibe with mine (and Arcade Fire shows 900,000 or thereabouts right now. Is this real-time?) then Arcade Fire is more than half as popular as the Beatles are, and nearly twice as popular as Jay-Z. Granted Arcade Fire has wide appeal but as far as gauging the lay of the land goes, the internet tends to be really distorting. It's an echo chamber.

[KharBevNor]

I wasn't saying it in terms of share, but in terms of popularity. On a service which is obviously not going to have every Arcade Fire listener ever, or even close, there are 1,155,590 listeners. That's a whole city of Arcade Fire listeners. That's four times the population of Iceland.

They're a pretty big band.

[E. Spaceman]

Though I mostly agree with Khar here, it does bear mention that an Arcade Fire fan is far more likely to have a last.fm than Dolly Parton fans.

[elizaknowswhatshesfor]

I'd rather listen to Dolly Parton than Arcade Fire.

I may be wrong but recently magazines such as the NME & Kerrang or Metal Hammer even Rock Sound have failed to bring to light as many bands that aren't backed by huge PR machines. Which to me equates with being mainstream. But then I'm a dirty old DIY punk kid.*

I have said I don't read Pitchfork, but from that list I'm guessing the same is true. It's Pay to Play on paper/screen.

(*Who loves Dolly Parton.)

[Johnny C]

Top 40 is a wayyyyy better metric of what's mainstream since it's largely based on sales and actual airplay, far more accurate than the nebulous "they get played on the radio." Arcade Fire are "indie huge" but that doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things, and if you think the Antlers are remotely "big" you've got a completely warped sense of perspective - acts in the Top 40 have millions more sales and listeners, whether their Last.fm charts show it or not.

Also - and I wanna stress this for the next time it gets brought up - Last.fm is an awful, awful metric for a band's popularity. The last time I had this conversation, we looked at Broken Social Scene and Green Day. The former band has a third of the latter's listeners on last.fm, but the latter has several gold records and has sold somewhere in the neighbourhood of sixty or seventy million albums worldwide. Broken Social Scene don't even have a gold record in Canada. Last.fm is basically for people who care about Last.fm. It has no bearing on how popular an act actually is.

[KharBevNor]

Over a million people listening to something anywhere is still crazy big though.

Also, a quick read of the Arcade Fire's wiki shows that Funeral is gold in several countries, including Canada, they've had top twenty singles in the UK, they've been on the cover of the Canadian edition of Time, MTV and NME named Funeral one of their top albums of the year, they've been on SNL...and it goes on. My suppositions are fairly good in this case, I think.

[Johnny C]

Gold in Canada is 50,000 records, and here the Arcade Fire aren't even as popular as the Tragically Hip. They're popular but to suggest that they're a household name is preposterous.

[Johnny C]

Like, what is the metric that we're using for "mainstream"? We're all aware here that there is an actual, real mainstream, with people who are rich as fuck from millions of record sales and they sell out shows to millions of people across North America, Europe and Asia, right? That's crazy big. Akon has sold more records than the Arcade Fire will probably ever press. Kanye West and Lady Gaga were going to tour, and they were probably going to play to more people than the ten best-attended Broken Social Scene shows put together.

People in the independent music community have this really bad habit of developing blinders when it comes to defining "popular." A million listeners? Like I said, The Tragically Hip have more listeners than that in Canada alone, and they've definitely sold more records than the Arcade Fire. I'm not going to dispute that a lot of people like the Arcade Fire, and I'm not going to dispute that, in their niche, they are a powerhouse. But a big niche is still a niche.

[a pack of wolves]

There is a difference between mainstream and megastar though. With people like Akon, Kanye West and Lady Gaga you're talking about the very biggest sellers. By the measure of the top 40 Arcade Fire are surely mainstream, Neon Bible spent months in the UK top 40 albums and debuted at number 2 (several places above new entries by Cascada and Russell Watson, hardly indie fare). Sure, they've never done better than a top 20 single but they're not the kind of band that shifts singles hugely anyway these days, so the big marketing push will be for the album. And it was big, I can still remember being surprised by the massive ads in Virgin since I thought they weren't all that big a band.

Coincidentally Neon Bible also debuted above The Very Best of Dolly Parton, one can only hope because most people have sense enough to own Jolene at least already. Either that or we're doomed as a species.

[Inlander]

As long as people still (A) play "I Will Always Love You" at weddings, and (B) favour Whitney Houston's version over Dolly's pretty much perfect original, we're fucked.

[doombilly]

Was wondering what y'all thought were the best online review sites for teh indie rock?

[Damnable Fiend]

I learn about most of the music I listen to here honestly.

oh, and to a lesser degree last.fm

[karl gambolputty...]

Tiny Mix Tapes

[scarred]

Tiny Mix Tapes

[elizaknowswhatshesfor]

http://www.dieshellsuit.co.uk/

I'm biased though.

I think now with so many sites to listen to music on you can be your own reviewer. It's easy to give a band a quick listen.

[E. Spaceman]

the DFA Records webstore


http://dfa.hasawebstore.com/

[Scandanavian War Machine]

here the Arcade Fire aren't even as popular as the Tragically Hip.

thank god

[KvP]

Tiny Mix Tapes

[TheFuriousWombat]

Tiny Mix Tapes is probably the best source for reviews out there. They have some great writers. Several times I've read a review of an older album, something I loved at the time I first heard it but hadn't listened to for a while, sometimes even a couple years, and I immediately had to go and play that album.

[Joseph]

Tiny Mix Tapes is sometimes alright, but they are also responsible for such horribly misguided pieces as this: http://www.tinymixtapes.com/article2509,2509

[Johnny C]

There is a difference between mainstream and megastar though.

Okay now this is just getting ridiculous

[KvP]

Tiny Mix Tapes is sometimes alright, but they are also responsible for such horribly misguided pieces as this: http://www.tinymixtapes.com/article2509,2509

I may have played volleyball for that guy, once.

[Christophe]

Tiny Mix Tapes is sometimes alright, but they are also responsible for such horribly misguided pieces as this: http://www.tinymixtapes.com/article2509,2509

Oh God I remember that fucking review. Ever since I've read it I've basically written off TMT as being anything other than shit. God reading it again is making my blood boil I swear I'm gonna punch the fucking computer.

[michaelicious]

You wrote off an entire website because you disagreed with the opinion of one person?

I think this is my main problem with people getting all up in arms over internet music review websites. They look at the site like it is one monolithic entity that is trying to force its opinion on you, but these sites are just groups of people who love music. So, Jonathan P doesn't like .22. Who fucking cares. Literally billions of people don't like .22. Sure, maybe he was being a little bit dismissive but it's not like a music review is supposed to be an authoritative source written on a monument about whether or not an album is good or bad. It's just some dick's opinion.

Edit: I'm not trying to harsh on you or anything, Chris. I am sorry that it probably came off that way.

[Inlander]

Yeah, I don't really see what's got everyone all up in arms about that review. He didn't like the album. He explained why he didn't like the album. He made it clear that he wasn't pissing on the album just for fun. What do you want, a completely bland opinion free track-by-track descriptive account of the album?

[elizaknowswhatshesfor]

People do and will though, I get hate mail, but then i 'm often an utter dick when I review stuff.

It's when you have a huge stack of CD's to review & half of them are samey toss bollocks it's gets a little hard to "Sounds like Biffy Clyro, only bad" in an interesting way.

(Really I've got 6 at the moment that I just don't know what to write as they are so BORING they aren't even bad.)

However I would like to add that My Father (A Journalist, a proper one who does news and that) always said it harder to write something nice than nasty so you should always try and find something, one thing positive to write about.

I do TRY & do that. But for bands that have put no effort in originality that can be hard.

Plus fuck everyone else, it's my opinion

[Ptommydski]

I like the idea of just not reviewing things that you don't like.

Imagine a whole website or magazine full of just stuff that people really like.

I mean why not?

[elizaknowswhatshesfor]

That's what it generally is, but sometimes the press info sounds like something you'd really like, but is actually terrible...We do request which CD's we'd like to review.

[Christophe]

Sure, maybe he was being a little bit dismissive but it's not like a music review is supposed to be an authoritative source written on a monument about whether or not an album is good or bad

For me, though, people do look at sites like Pitchfork and TMT and take their opinions as a full authority on music, when maybe listening to the damn thing for themselves probably would be a better barometer of whether they like it or not. Maybe my view is skewed and needs revision? Maybe my distaste for TMT based solely on that .22 review is very misguided and comes down to "we have differing viewpoints about what kind of music is worthy to be listened to". I mean, I did view TMT as a pretty reliable source of good music journalism before I saw the .22 review. Pitchfork has a fucking shitty review of SKWM's Blueblood and I still read it from time to time (though not for any actual musical opinion on anything I'd be interested, God no.)

I have a lot more to say about this but I've got to jet.

Edit: I'm not trying to harsh on you or anything, Chris. I am sorry that it probably came off that way.

It's cool dogg, I tend to be pretty irrational at times.

[E. Spaceman]

It's when you have a huge stack of CD's to review & half of them are samey toss bollocks it's gets a little hard to "Sounds like Biffy Clyro, only bad" in an interesting way.

"Sounds like Biffy Clyro"

[Johnny C]

I like the idea of just not reviewing things that you don't like.

Imagine a whole website or magazine full of just stuff that people really like.

I mean why not?

I don't mind reading negative reviews of albums I think are positive because they get me to think critically about why I like the albums in question. There's occasionally an offensively bad review, like the pulled Zaireeka review where the dude couldn't find three more friends with stereos, but even those have me mentally composing responses. It's not bad in any capacity to be confronted with an opinion you find contrary to your own, and it's not bad to talk about it with the person holding the other opinion even if the end result of the conversation will be that you are unable to change the other person's opinion.

Plus an entire magazine of this would be intensely bland. Cultural discourse is reliant on discourse, and the parts of culture that you don't like aren't going to go away just because you don't talk about it. And it's interesting to talk about.

[michaelicious]

If only we could get people to not take it so personally when other people disagree with them.

[Be My Head]

I get most of my music recommendations from these two blogs...

http://closetcurios2.blogspot.com/
http://cosmichearse.blogspot.com/

There's tons of shit you're guaranteed to not find anywhere else, with the added bonus of actual reviews/write-ups on the albums.

Yes, I've returned the discussion to where you can get good music recommendations.

[a pack of wolves]

Plus an entire magazine of this would be intensely bland. Cultural discourse is reliant on discourse, and the parts of culture that you don't like aren't going to go away just because you don't talk about it. And it's interesting to talk about.

Exactly. For an example of just how dull it can be, look at the now-defunct Plan B. Every time I picked up that magazine it seemed to be gushing over numerous artists with hardly any discussion of what they disliked. The end result was almost meaningless, since the lack of negative criticism resulted in a lack of critical engagement. Empty praise because you had nothing to compare it with. What I want from a review is a critical discourse with the piece of art in question, liking or disliking it can be a part of that but it isn't even necessary to bring that up. Much more interesting is what the reviewer thinks the piece is doing and what they see as being the ramifications of that.

[AanAllein]

I think part of why people get so upset at Pitchfork (maybe upset is the wrong word...) is that they do try and present the reviews as coming from one uniform entity. Reviewers seem to need to toe the line, and like the same albums that all the other reviews do, hate the same etc. This comes across very strongly in their best-of lists: they're not presented as based on voting, or whatever, but rather one distinct opinion from "Mr Pitchfork." I think that's why they attract a lot of vitriol - it becomes "Pitchfork hates this band/album" rather than "Joe Blow hates this band/album."

[KvP]

I don't think that's accurate, actually. The end-of-year lists are supposed to look definitive, but there's not much editorial control at Pitchfork (or most tastemaker sites, for that matter). A good example is the tepid review of Daft Punk's Discovery, which has been alluded to in this thread before. It got a pretty dismal 6.4, yet here it is, #3 on the best albums of the decade. If you look at their news stories on Daft Punk you see more evidence that the reviewer of the album didn't like it but a lot of other p4kers really did.

[E. Spaceman]

Not certain if they did it with this one, but typically they publish the writers' individual lists.

[scarred]

They usually do that in December or January if I remember correctly.

[tender]

Yeah, I was hoping to see some kind of individual lists at the end as well.

[doombilly]

ok, thanks gang.