Pitchfork Reviews Itself

Pitchfork
Pitchforkmedia.com
[The internet; 2006]
Rating: 4.2


Over the last few years, Pitchfork has been providing news, information and reviews for the over-zealous indie elite, but in more recent times it's audience has expanded greatly and it now also caters to those who may be deemed as "outsiders". Many have contemplated as to whether the recent intensification in readership would result in a broader musical genre focus for the site; or if they would merely become procurers of Britney and K-Fed gossip. It is impossible to refute the fact that Pitchfork freely reviews the most up-to-date pop singles, but clearly such acts are made in jest, or are occasional admittances that pop artists are capable of bearing more noteworthy musical tracks.

Additionally, it is futile to deny Pitchfork's (slighty more than) infrequent endulgences into indie elitism. However, such sidetracks to the site's main content can be forgotten if they are viewed simply as self-referencing pastiches. After all, it is safe to estimate that the majority of Pitchfork's original readers are comforted by the inclusion of such in-jokes and obscure referrals. So then it is clear that Pitchfork is making a chivalrous attempt to retain it's core readership. It would seem it is aware that without this audience, the site would eventually only be writing for self-gratification.

Pitchfork is able to provide enough information on the current enterprises of endlessly obscure artists that it still pertains useful value to the very type of people the site was originally designed for. Despite this, one often finds the site to be nothing more than an incohesive, masturbatory collage of words checked ten times over in a thesaurus before being randomly distributed into textual form with the odd inclusion of the name of a band or producing team.

Ultimately, Pitchfork has proven itself unable to sustain its own creation. What was once a legitimately interesting and useful website has degraded into an admittedly still amusing but conlusively nothing more than something that is endlessly desiring, without success, to be an autocratic musical footnote. One must relent at the point of acknowledging Pitchfork is making somewhat of an effort to supply relevant information, it is simply the unhappy fact that it has allowed itself to degrade into a hoard of employees who presumingly never step outside their office.

-Timothy V. Kopecken, October 4, 2006