Breaking away from the stylized snark of zine writing and in direct opposition to the lean reviews published in magazines, DiCrescenzo’s paean to Kid A reflected a kind of earnestness and purple-hued prose the site would come to knowingly embrace. For many, it put Pitchfork on the map as a site that was doing something. People passed the review around the internet touting its rare perfect score and its accompanying essay that was as heartfelt as it was bizarre. Brent DiCrescenzo wrote an enthusiastic and florid 10.0 review of a very consequential album from a very consequential band-and the afterglow lingers to this day. “To us, there was definitely a chip on our shoulders, being from Chicago.” A SHOOTING STARĬometh the hour, cometh the man who had never even seen a shooting star before. To him, the rating grew out of resenting the New York-ness of the album. “I listened to that record two weeks ago, it’s probably one of the Sonic Youth albums that I’ve listened to the most at this point,” he said when we caught up with him recently. In 2013, he wrote a mea culpa when he was the music editor of Time Out Chicago. “I remember debating some scores with writers-James Wisdom wanting to give Save Ferris a 9.5, for example-but not this one.”ĭiCrescenzo eventually came around on the record and even grew to love it. “We liked to do things that generated attention, but nothing about it was unusual,” he says. Schreiber is pretty sure he hadn’t even heard the album when the review ran. Neither Schreiber nor DiCrescenzo remember discussing the rating at all. You might think giving a scathing review to one of the defining underground rock bands of the era, a group whose very existence formed a cornerstone of the music scene Pitchfork was documenting, would be the product of a great deal of deliberation. But as a six-song EP from an emerging band, it’s pretty exceptional.” A SURPRISE 0.0 “The score obviously throws expectations way out of whack, and the title is unfortunate. We didn’t have any readers, one, and two, the internet was just so new, the dividing line between local and global wasn’t really present." But Schreiber still listens to that first 10.0. We both went crazy for it.” But there was very little thought or discussion about giving an album a perfect score or planting a flag by championing a local band. Jason had seen 12 Rods live and was blown away, and he bought the CD of Gay? at their merch table and made me a copy. “He was older, going to shows every night and writing reviews for a local paper called The Squealer. “He lived in Minneapolis, and I was still in the suburbs,” Schreiber says. Gay? by style-hopping outfit 12 Rods, written by Jason Josephes (for a time, Ryan and Jason wrote almost all the content on the site), came first, followed by Walt Mink’s El Producto. The first two 10.0 ratings in Pitchfork history happened in close succession, and they were both by Minneapolis bands.
For a large swath of time, the site was run mostly by middle-class white guys in their 20s and 30s, and a decent chunk of the taste and writing reflected that limited perspective.
It took a while for Pitchfork to catch up to the writers and editors who were several steps ahead in alt media, those who realized how much work needed to be done to make the music press aware of its biases and prejudices. Pitchfork was founded by Ryan Schreiber in his suburban Minneapolis bedroom, and emerged from zine culture and the strident language of the rock press and alternative newspapers. Below, we’ve unearthed a handful that shaped Pitchfork, occasionally influenced the conversation around music and, here and there, even music itself (though ultimately, that is for others to decide.) We highlight band-breaking and genre-specific reviews, early Best New Musics, and some of the unforgettable and downright goofy moments that reflected the site’s evolving editorial sensibilities.Ībout that last point: Since Pitchfork has been publishing for so long, it’s easy to forget just how humble its beginnings were, and how the norms of its early period differed from those of the present day. The reviews section has published over 28,000 reviews since it first began.