Back in the late nineties and early oughts I used to follow pitchfork religiously. The problem, though, was always the writing, which was often as pedantic as it was unrelated to the actual album. Take this review, or even better this review of an album by Ignatz that spends the entire first half of the review talking about fascism, bluegrass and a completely unrelated musician Henry Flynt:

The critic Roselee Goldberg credited the violinist Henry Flynt with taking the fascism out of bluegrass. Flynt's own self-appraisal was no less grandiose, once claiming that he "did for hillbilly music what Ornette Coleman did for jazz." These were grand conceits for a man who ceased making music more than 20 years ago, and whose total recorded output had been until recently consigned to oblivion. But time has a way of transmuting self-mythology into canon, and recent years have seen Flynt's reputation loom ever larger.

In fact it was worse than this, far far worse. But it seems like someone finally had some sense to edit out some of the guff. At one point in time I remember seeing a feature purporting to "deconstruct" Kid A. I've tried to find it in the archives, but it seems to have mysteriously disappeared. What's more previously intolerable reviews have been whitewashed.

Kudos to you pitchfork! You can imagine my delight when I scanned a review on Fennesz that was actually sensible and informative. No more glancing at the number and then moving on to the new york times. Hell, I may even buy the new Fennesz album...

Except for the fact that due to previous pitchfork reviews I already have three albums by Fennesz, only one of which is actually listenable (Endless Summer), not to mention albums by US Maple and Chalabi Effect. Damn you pitchfork!