I’m really into pitchfork.tv’s new +1 series, which is essentially a short interview with an artist and shows the artist playing some of their music live.

I only recently found out that araabmuzick is from the city I grew up in and I think it’s really cool that he’s playing in front of huge crowds of people that are clearly really into his tunes. Providence doesn’t have a huge electronic scene, but I’ve always got an impression that the hip-hop scene is kind of “the thing” here but I’ve been too lazy to follow up on it.

I also thought this +1 with Zola Jesus was cherry. I like museum venues for the same reason she stated in the video, and enjoyed hearing her songs played with a live string ensamble. I wonder where nika purchased her cool light-up outfit, it’s very unique. I like her hair. She looks like a girl that I married in a dream I had recently.

I’m really into Lotus Plaza’s new LP. Side B is killer.

I recently wrote a post about not seeing nico jarr in providence. At least I have this +1 video to have a taste of what it would’ve been like. This excerpt from his 5 hour set is really fucking good. Just as a side note – let’s not forget the extended performances grouper and jefre cantu-ledesma have been up to this past year. Will this become a thing? I don’t think I could handle a performance over 3 hours unless there was free pizza and lime gatorade.

Bryant over at Part Time Music just posted this awesome, in-depth review analyzing Pitchfork’s rating system, due to Toro Y Mois’ obviously underrated Pitchfork review. You can read it all here, but below are the general conclusions:



* All albums scoring 8.6 and higher was automatically made Best New Music.


* If you are a metal fan, you’ve gotten royally screwed over and overlooked by p4k. Only two albums were selected for BNM within the past year: Sunn O))))’s Monoliths & Dimensions and Isis’s Wavering Radiant (both with scores of 8.5). Adding insult to injury was that out of the 15 albums that scored an 8.5, 11 of them made BNM. Two of the four that didn’t make the cut were metal-related records (Baroness’s Blue Record and Converge’s Axe to Fall) — both occurring on days when no other record made BNM.



* Another one of the four albums that ranked 8.5 and was not stamped with a BNM was contemporary jazz musician Jon Hassel’s LP verbosely entitled Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street, supplying another example of a high performing album from a more obscure genre getting the shaft. In p4k’s defense, Yacht’s superb See Mystery Lights was BNMed that day which leads me to my next point…


* If you release a great record, make sure you don’t get reviewed on the same day as another great record. I don’t have an individual statistic for this, but I often saw high scoring albums (8.2-8.5) not get a BNM because another even better (or same ranking, just more hyped) album was reviewed the same day.



* If you are a hyped record or are an established act, you have a better shot of getting a Best New Music when you are on the cusp. Now this seems kind of obvious, but there were some egregious instances where this occurred. Of the 41 albums that scored an 8.1 and 8.2, five were chosen as BNM: Surfer Blood’s Astro Coast, Atlas Sound’s Logos Cass McCombs’s Catacombs, Bill Callahan’s Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle, and Wavves’s S/T


* Yeah, I have no idea what they were thinking BNM-ing that Mos Def record (the lowest score and, out of 36 records that scored an 8.0, it was the only one to get BNM-ed).

1. Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion 131k
2. Dirty Projectors Bitte Orca 48k
3. the xx xx 35k
4. The Flaming Lips Embryonic 75k (estimate)
5. Raekwon Only Built For Cuban Linx Part II 141k
6. Grizzly Bear Veckatimest 132k
7. Bat For Lashes Two Suns 36k
8. Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix 205k
9. Fever Ray Fever Ray 23k
10. Girls Album 19k

Sales figures are from Soundscan through December 6th, 2009. I was hoping to get data for the entire Pitchfork top 50 and reshuffle the list to reflect sales, but that’s looking to be a tall order. Here are sales numbers for other albums on the list:

12. Yeah Yeah Yeahs It’s Blitz 184k
20. Real Estate Real Estate 3,400
21. Neko Case Middle Cyclone 169k
26. Bon Iver Blood Bank EP 89k
34. Passion Pit Manners 82k (best seller on top 50)
37. Antlers Hospice 13k
41. Baroness Blue Record 12k
45. Mountain Goats The Life of the World to Come 14k
48. Doom Born Like This 4,300

To get an idea of context, here are some sales figures of some other artists who did not make the Pitchfork list.

Wilco Wilco (The Album) 243k
Lily Allen It’s Not Me, It’s You 250k
Metric Fantasies 76k
Andrew Bird Noble Beast 126k
The Gossip Music For Men 19k
Silversun Pickups Swoon 193k
Muse The Resistance 292k
Lonely Island Incredibad 266k
Owl City Ocean Eyes 384k
Pearl Jam Backspacer 394k
Arctic Monkeys Humbug 72k
Matt & Kim Grand 64k
U2 No Line On The Horizon 1m
Paramore Brand New Eyes 327k