Soundtable on Pitchfork's negative review of the Airborne Toxic Event

Pitchfork Media posted a review Wednesday of the debut album from the Airborne Toxic Event, the next big Silver Lake band, according to gathering local legend, that will revive the sputtering indie rock scene. But not everyone's so convinced: Pitchfork's Ian Cohen gave it an abysmal 1.6 rating -- hey, at least it wasn't a monkey peeing into its own mouth, or is that better? -- and the first paragraph launched with a withering critique of the Los Feliz/Silver Lake scene at large.

On Thursday, TATE responded with an open letter on its website, stating, among other defensive moves, that "we know full well that Pitchfork doesn’t so much critique bands as critique a band’s ability to match a certain indie rock aesthetic. We don’t match it."

Soundboard loves a good brouhaha so we started an e-mail discussion. Here are some excerpts. Weigh in with your own thoughts in the comments, if so inclined, but no pictures of animals doing anything but looking cute will be allowed.

-- Margaret Wappler

Margaret Wappler: OK, so here's the first paragraph of the Pitchfork review: "I probably couldn't get anyone here in Los Angeles to admit it, but the city lacks a flagship upstart indie band and wants one in the worst way -- one both a little fresher than Spin cover stars Beck and Rilo Kiley and with more mainstream potential than the bands from the Smell. The onus would likely fall on the folkier, cuddlier Silver Lake/Los Feliz scene, but over the past three years it feels as if the area's bands have failed to rise to the occasion."

Let's hash this out. Do we think this critique of L.A. is fair? Are we desperate to run any indie band up the flagpole? Is it true that the Silver Lake/Los Feliz scene has failed to rise to the occasion? And finally, is Pitchfork instantly knocking down Airborne for being from L.A.?

Jessica Gelt: OK, I’m from this city and a card-carrying member of its incestuous so-called Silver Lake indie-rock scene and I’ll admit it: L.A. lacks a flagship upstart indie band and wants one in the worst way. 

[Full disclosure: Gelt is a member of the Movies, which has played repeatedly with TATE and Silversun Pickups.] That isn’t for lack of trying, though. I know plenty of talented musicians just waiting for the opportunity to play someplace bigger than Spaceland. The Silversun Pickups' ascension through the ranks of the scene and onto an international platform was both exciting and frustrating for a lot of those very same musicians who were split into two groups: Those who thought the Silversuns deserved everything they got, and those who felt (with varying levels of jealousy) that the Silversuns were probably the least deserving of mainstream attention of any group in the scene. (A scene, mind you, that I would not at all define as “folksy” or “cuddly.”)

Those same general feelings have accompanied the Airborne Toxic Event’s recent rise; and I suspect they would accompany the rise of just about any local band in just about any city in the world.

August Brown: I'd like to meet anybody not in media who is waiting for a "flagship upstart L.A. indie band" and not finding one. It sort of goes against the whole fabric of the city to assume any kind of musical monoculture, and honestly, the whole Silver Lake 'scene' peaked years and years ago (I think Elliott Smith's death might have heralded it). Pick any given year and you'll find a few L.A. bands who know each other and get some modicum of national attention (the fact that most of them are deeply mediocre is a different argument).

Chris Barton: Just what is a flagship indie band? Who the hell actually has one of those within the last five years? The only one I can immediately think of is Montreal and Arcade Fire. I'm curious what, exactly, a 'flagship upstart indie band' is.

And while definitely the Silver Lake/Echo Park bands 'of note' that have risen to theater-level standing lately have been underwhelming, why don't they count as one of those bands cited here as having 'mainstream potential'? If graduating to larger venues, playing main-stage festival sets and becoming a known commodity outside of L.A. doesn't elevate a band to flagship status, what does then? Moving to Brooklyn?

Plus, I thought Pitchfork was unnecessarily hard on Airborne. They aren't reinventing anything, sure, but Ra Ra Riot certainly isn't either, yet they picked up a 7.5. Maybe they're just derivative of cooler bands?

AB: Well, if this reviewer is looking for an L.A.-based guitar band that somehow captures the way the city feels right now, I think the Sub Pop-signed, MTV-rotating, theater-playing No Age meets that criteria handily. They have the extra cred of putting a venue on the world map (see: Beck, Spaceland) and taking a half-dozen bands with them. I just got the Crystal Antlers debut for Touch and Go in the mail today, which was a Best New Music pick on Pitchfork a while back.

Whether that review is accurate or not, it did seem like the guy had it out for them contextually, and that his bigger problem is that the L.A. water system is somehow spiked with derivative-band pills. True or not in this case, whatever this hypothetical 'scene' is looking for seems to have found it elsewhere, and TATE is after a wholly different audience -- the kind of kid who listens to the Strokes and Interpol in '08 and couldn't give a damn about a band being derivative.

MW: I want to circle back to the criticism in the last line about Silver Lake/Los Feliz not rising to the occasion over the past three years. I'm wondering if that's also a bigger crisis about "the indie band." Yes, too many of them get too much exposure too quickly, but isn't it also a problem with innovation? Too many "indie bands" in any city sound derivative. Maybe it's OK to sound like someone else, but you at least have to be completely on-point with it.

Could part of the problem with that scene be that the reigning aesthetic seems to eschew flashiness? It's not that the scene doesn't have some charismatic members, but when I think about other L.A. bands that have made it big, like Jane's Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers, I can't help but think that both of those bands had way more presence in a room than probably any five bands combined in Silver Lake.

AB: I think that maybe the proximity to and surge of licensing and "functional music" for film and TV has created this kind of vague slop of 'indie' bands whose music is designed or pitched to accompany other narratives (namely, teen-centric soap operas) rather than become one. Hence a purposeful or subliminal lack of charisma. I can't stand RHCP to save my life, but at least they're immediately recognizable and compelling in a Tarzan-sex-god way. Their music is so wholly itself that it doesn't work as anything but itself. TATE seems representative of a whole subclass of bands whose popularity is increasingly defined by placements, and nobody seems willing to be idiosyncratic and pass that chance.

CB: Absolutely agree about the flashiness deficit going on right now, but I don't now if the placement angle is necessarily to blame. Granted, its probably the only viable revenue stream at this point -- wait, I think I just threw up a little writing that -- but lacking charisma is not a new problem in indiedom. Death Cab is not what you'd call magnetic by any stretch and they've been around for years, and even Beck for all his quirks (willful or otherwise) was completely overshadowed by the towering personality of the Flaming Lips when they toured together, though even their shtick has become a brand to some extent.

JG: The “indie band” is definitely in crisis. The term has become as watered down as the word “alternative” became in the ‘90s. Whoever crushes that sad label and emerges by defining a whole new popular “alternative” genre and giving it a new name will be the Next Big Thing.

I keep thinking that the current crisis in American politics and life will bring around that band. But I’ve been waiting for that since 2001. There’s no anger in popular music today, and that’s a real shame.

From here the conversation swung into the state of political music today. To boil it down, let's just say that we all agree that today's young artists just aren't bringing it. We abandoned that conversation, but renewed our TATE trail after we read the open letter:

JG: You should never reply to critics, unless you’re Axl Rose and the song is “Get in the Ring.” Otherwise, you just look like you care WAY too much and you give up power, not regain it. Critics have a job to do and sometimes that job involves hurting feelings and making people angry. Artists should respect that and not make bad reviews into an even bigger deal by trying to defend themselves.

CB: Nice one, I completely forgot about Axl. Who would've expected that he'd have trouble finishing an album after whipping off a love ballad like that? Apart from Blue Öyster Cult getting Lester Bangs to type at the side of the stage while they performed, no real good has come of artists firing back, apart from raising the writer's profile. As if Pitchfork needed any further reminders of their importance.

Speaking of, do such responses damage an artist's reputation at least in some circle or another? The Ryan Adams Hatewagon had already left the station pretty well when he started his rabbit-eared antics (also with Pitchfork, and Greg Kot), but it seemed like it sort of picked up steam as people started learning more and more about him.

AB: Indeed, "Get in the Ring" may be the only instance of a band actually winning a kerfuffle with a critic (or many: "That means you Andy Secher at Hit Parader, Circus Magazine, Mick Wall at Kerrang, Bob Guccione Jr. at Spin.")

Pitchfork's main talent lies in kicking a band up from obscurity to decent club shows, and Travis Morrison aside, they've never been able to actually derail an otherwise ascendant band with a bad review. If they really wanted to torpedo TATE, they'd give them a 4 and move on, but I'd wager the band at least got a few hundred clicks from kids wondering what the fuss is about, and besides, hating on Pitchfork has been the new trusting in them for a long time now. 

That said, though, engaging with Pitchfork is like engaging with Gawker -- the artist always loses when the house rigs the deck. I know the pull to respond must have been strong; Jollet has written for various publications (including the L.A. Times) and he probably cringed at some of the writer's less-insightful comments (who on Earth thinks L.A. music is remotely defined by the Sunset Strip anymore?). But maybe because of this, TATE could take a lesson from David Cross, who delivered the single greatest Pitchfork-gutting in history, and on their own site to boot. Critical judo works two ways, so maybe Jollet should just start freelancing for them.

MW: I don't agree that to critique Pitchfork is to believe them. It might be granting them power as an important cog in the indie taste-making machine, but do I personally trust their taste infallibly? No way. This has been discussed on Soundboard before, but they are obsessed with context and king-making. Most of their reviews drown in context before they get to any point. I'm all for the bigger picture but is it Airborne's fault that Silver Lake is a more or less a stillborn scene?

Also, Pitchfork's sense of discovery and celebration about music doesn't feel as autonomous or altruistic as it should. it feels egotistical and vengeful, i.e., when they believe in a band, it gets carried aloft for all to see and throw roses. But if a band falters, they throw stones harder than anyone else. It's criticism for the schoolyard.

I think the fact that TATE bothered to respond does cede some power to Pitchfork, but I like the panache and the considered tone. My gut prediction is that as the critical community broadens out on the Internet, that artists will feel increasinly emboldened to respond. For better or worse, Web upstarts like Pitchfork have taken away some of the monolithic mystique of the critic. Ian Cohen, and indeed, Pitchfork at large, is no Michiko Kakutani.

Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/Los Angeles Times

Comments

[david]

Pitchfork takes themselves very very seriously. The reviews are based on more than the music, it's your image, where you come from, how "indie" you are and all that pointless nonsense.

[Steve Corey]

Go to a Movies or Happy Hollows or Henry Clay People or Dios or Le Switch show and tell me again there's nothing happening worth writing about in Silver Lake. The A.T.E. BITES the large one. Write about something original and fresh for a change.