Waking Ear

The New York Observer's Hillary Frey ponders the Fork's position as music's trendiest tastemaker, and the cast of ILM, once the site's nastiest collective critic, seems pretty pleased. What's next? A Fluxblog paean to Clear Channel?

By the way, Frey's dead-on about the Pitchfork Effect on concert attendance, and it's not limited to Williamsburg. At the Vietnam/Death From Above 1979/Panthers show a couple of weeks ago here in Dallas, almost all of the crowd disappeared after DFA1979's set, leaving the former-'Fork-darling Panthers with an audience of about a dozen people.

Having never thought Pitchfork's praise for Panthers was deserved, this didn't bother me too much. But having seen bands I like, such as the French Kicks, get the bad end of a 'Fork review, I can honestly say it sucks when one critical voice has all the power. I don't know that it's ever been any other way; somebody's got to be the standard-bearer. But I know I turn to Metacritic and a few other places in addition to Pitchfork because Schreiber & Co. do sometimes get it wrong.

That said, I credit Pitchfork with turning me on to many bands -- Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire, etc. -- I might have otherwise missed completely or at least have been delayed in discovering. As long as the site keeps its commitment to discovering good new music -- and it looks like Schreiber has his heart in the right place -- I'll keep checking it daily. (Critics, including der Schmubb, have pointed out that the writing on Pitchfork is often terribly overwrought, and I agree. But Schmubb has trained himself to just hone in on the third or fourth paragraphs of each review to get the gist, and he's right, it works.)

While the 'Fork is setting goals for itself, might I suggest one more? Staff diversification -- specifically, more women (I don't know the racial breakdown, but it's probably worth looking at, too). I believe there's only one female staff writer right now, and I know music-geekery is theoretically still a male thing. But a better array of perspectives could help.