The Pixies Respond To Pitchfork's Harsh Critic (1/10!) Of Their New Material
there goes your man
The Pixies’ Charles Thompson aka Black Francis, aka Frank Black, has no problem with the critics! In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he had the chance to express his feelings regarding the not-so-warm-reception that critics gave to the band’s new material, a self-released four-song EP, which received a 1 out of 10 by Pitchfork! Come on Pitchfork, not even 1.3 or some other ridiculous grades with decimals you usually give to some of your reviews? No, a plain and cold 1.0. It is The Pixies’ first release since their 1991 ‘Trompe Le Monde’ and this is part of the Pitchfork’s critic:
‘The cheerily plodding power chords and excruciating rhyme scheme of “Another Toe in the Ocean” recall Green Album-era Weezer or Lit. The turgid crunch of “What Goes Boom” summons uncomfortable memories of Papa Roach covering “Gouge Away”. This music wasn’t just written or recorded without any regard to the quality of the Pixies legacy, it was done so without regard to songwriting quality at all. If one of these songs had started playing over the credits of an American Pie knockoff that never reached theaters, you would not blink.’
Ouch! And Pitchfork isn’t alone, the EP score on Metacritic is 36 out of 100, so not very high. Furthermore, when I saw The Pixies live a few weeks ago, I didn’t really feel any enthusiasm for the new songs, although it is often the case for brand new material. However, Charles Thompson is totally cool with that, ‘I would like to defend the Pitchfork review’, he firstly says in the interview, then adding ‘It is called Pitchfork, so to me, that’s sort of like says it all,.. they are critics,… blog, and they are called Pitchfork, so they have psychologically prepared everyone at that!’
He also declared he hasn’t read the Pitchfork review, but he basically continues by defending the role of critics which allow us to have this kind of conversation, as arts wouldn’t enter into the arena the same way if no one would say anything… ‘it’s exciting to have critics’. To paraphrase Thompson, there is no bad criticism, as long as someone is talking about the album… But I have always wonder about this, is he saying all this because he has no choice, or is he really swallowing all these bad reviews with this coolness-coated good humor? It has to hurt a bit somewhere…
But if you listen to the interview carefully, Thompson is throwing a few punches to Pitchfork, he also says he doesn’t read Pitchfork in general, and calls them ‘a blog’, which in his mouth becomes a totally derogatory connotation.So, he has his revenge, the frontman of the very-influential Pixies never reads their online ‘blog’, and there is no way Pitchfork could take this with the same coolness.
