RipFork

Artist: Soulsavers

Album: Broken

Reviewer: Stephen Deusner

Pitchfork, 2009

Writing Disorders: Infectious Punctuation, Jargon Palsy

Hyphen foul: “miles-of-bad-road voice.”

Most Emo Phrase: “a lone piano provides an almost gothic solemnity”

Stephen, you’ve been writing for Pitchfork for a while. I know because I remember your last name. It’s nearly as funny as mine. I figure that since you’ve been holding the pitchfork of power for so long, it’s corrupted your mind. My first example:

“he’s planning a sort of Yojimbo double-cross that will pit the Twilight Singers against Belle and Sebastian.”

Never seen that movie, never heard of the Twilight Singers, know a bit about Belle and Sebastian, so I’m 1/3 of the way towards figuring out what you just wrote. I’m sure those who got the other 2/3 of the puzzle are having a jolly good laugh. Oh, me.

Your writing is dense, Stephen, making it hard to understand claims that don’t make much sense to begin with. Case in point:

“Their distinguishing characteristic seems to be their fascination with American traditional forms, texturing their songs with buzzy threads of blues, gospel, folk, and jazz.”

Holy jargon, Batman! Might you have written, “they seem to like American music?” But really, you could have just omitted this oaf of a sentence since blues, gospel, folk, and jazz have covered a hell of a lot of ground since the 1920’s. Writing that musicians like to “texture” their songs with basic genres seems pretty dumb in the first place. It would be like saying:

“The baker’s distinguishing characteristic seems to be his fascination with traditional grains, texturing his bread with tones of wheat, rye, and corn.”

And then there’s this gem of a sentence. It’ll take a while to sort out, so free your calendar.

“His miles-of-bad-road voice is an obvious match for Soulsavers’ gothic Americanisms, and he sounds like just another instrument in their arsenal, communicating meaning via sound more than lyrics.”

Stephen, I’m a believer in keeping hyphens to a minimum. If there are too many hyphens in a phrase, the reader feels like the author wants him to sing it out loud. I also think that turning noun chains into adjectives with hyphens says you prefer bloated English over taking the time to find a one-word substitute. You honestly couldn’t have written “beaten voice,” “gravelly voice,” or “weary voice?”

Hold on, Stephen, I’m not done. What’s a “gothic Americanism?” Like…shopping at Hot Topic after buying a Big Mac? Robert Smith-inspired TV dinners? The Oakland Raiders? Yes, it sounds cool to invent your own “ism,” but try to remember that the burden of inventing something is explaining how it works.

As I expected, your conclusion is plum full of metaphors up the wazoo. I thought this bit was the best, though:

“The strings sound too much like Morricone, and “Wise Blood” recalls the quieter moments from Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman’s score for The Last of the Mohicans more than the John Huston movie.”

Who remembers the quieter moments from Last of the Mohicans? People remember Daniel Day Lewis bolting up a canyon to save his woman, shooting the fuck out of injuns to that pumping fiddle score. Come to think of it, I’m just going to go listen to that because I can’t tell if 6.3 is good, bad, or just something Pitchfork writers rate albums they’re afraid of being wrong about.