Pitchfork Media Review

Pitchfork Media (www.pitchforkmedia.com) is a website dedicated to covering indie music.  They feature daily news items, 5 album reviews per day, weekly columns, and mp3 streams.  They cover a very wide breath of indie/underground/electronic music styles, both current releases and significant reissues of older albums.

I've been reading the site daily for years now in order to get my musical fix.  I'm definitely not into all the types of music they cover, but have found some gems and often find out that a band I like has a new album out by seeing it reviewed on pitchfork.

In general the writing quality is good.  There a number of independent reviewers that write for pitchfork.  After reading long enough you start to get a sense for what these reviewers like, how they write, etc.  Unfortunately there's also some indier than thou nonsense and posturing that goes on.  For example, this quote from a recent review of Sonic Youth's deluxe reissue of Daydream Nation:

"It's almost a tautology: Indie fans love Daydream Nation because loving stuff like Daydream Nation is part of how we define what indie fans are."
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/43525-daydream-nation-deluxe-edition

I mean come on; how about liking the music for the music and not for what all the scene-sters will think of you?

My only other complaint with pitchfork is that there's really no way to interact with anyone else on the site.  It's very much in the style of a Web 1.0 publishing site where the content is pushed at you.

Overall, I still like reading pitchfork, but I have to prep myself before wading in.  If you're at all into indie music styles, you'll probably find some value in this site.