Pitchfork Doesn’t ‘Get’ Catcall
News posted Friday, June 15 2012 at 04:00 PM.
Related: Catcall.
A time capsule from a blank world.
This is how Pitchfork describes The Warmest Place, the long-awaited debut album by Sydney’s Catcall (aka Catherine Kelleher).
In a review published by the self-styled US tastemaker today (June 15), writer Lindsay Zoladz has slammed the album’s “refusal to do anything new with the reference points it wears on its sleeve”, conferring it a paltry 4.3. “The Warmest Place is so aughts-by-numbers,” wrote Zoladz, “that it already feels like a relic, frozen in a moment it can't quite transcend.”
While signaling out ‘Autumn’ from the 2008 Anniversary EP as one of few highlights, Zoladz took aim at – of all tracks – ‘Swimming Pool’. “But the worse offense is probably the face-palmingly literal ‘Swimming Pool’, on which the Euro-trash synth sunbursts are as awkwardly porny as the lyrics (‘Goosebumps all over/ Nipples harden’). If hell is an American Apparel, this song plays there on loop.”
Incidentally, the song was named as M+N’s Track of the Year for 2010, with Shaun Prescott describing it as “a rare species of pop music that doesn't press itself upon you. It bleeds and smears and evolves and gradually becomes alive”. Who to believe!
Out May 4 through The Ivy League, The Warmest Place has already been one of the most talked-about local releases of the year. In her glowing, “On Rotation” review of the album for M+N, Caitlin Welsh praised it as “heart-on-sleeve, ears-in-adolescence pop, where every tired pop trope has been fished from the dustbin and carefully reconstructed to remind you why you liked it so much when you were less cynical”.
Related: Pitchfork Gives Total Control 7.8
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Sounds like a repressed hipster with her american apparel bashing yet writing-for-pitchforking.
Pitchfork doesnt get lots of stuff. Why do we care?
I was kinda feeling what the reviewer was getting at, till they attacked Our 'Swimming Pool.'
because someone needs to call them out on describing 'swimming pool' as a shit song. and that someone is US!
x-post
Agree with pitchfork.
Yes, absolutely...that's exactly how I feel about this album. I can't believe that the only person that echoes my thoughts on it is a Pitchfork writer...all this unwavering praise for it made me want to drive a nail through my head.
yeah same. how dare they fuxn hate on that triumph of aughties aughtmanship?
sorry, i was agreeing with mud before the rest of you bozos chimed in. x
Also, swimming people?
ok, this is relevant to my interests
has praise really been unwavering ghoti? i didn't bother paying attention because 80% of the record did nothing for me.
is it swimming people or swimming pool?
The Sebastian Tellier review today (which was positive) also used American Apparel as a reference point. I didn't read the other three reviews, but this could be some exciting new form of product placement.
Probably not, but it sure got a lot of interest from a lot of prominent musical minds for what I think is a sappy, uninteresting record. Was pretty fed up with essentially being told that I don't 'get pop music' whenever I tried to express distaste for it too.
Catcall is a a visionary aughteur.
I can't comment on the rest of the album, but 'Swimming Pool' was hardly aughties-sounding. Unless ''aughties'' just means ''eighties plus twenty years''.
Maybe I need to listen to more girly electro-pop.
dashes to JB to pick up Ladyhawke CD
Is M+N going to write a news story on every bad review she gets? Non-news.
yeah, probably.
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I agree.
If you don't like/hate Catcall's music, fair enough.
Lady Gaga? what what?
You sir/madam, is a bloody idiot.
Wait - what?
We're supposed to be listening to the music? We've just been calculating a weighted combined score of how much they were being talked about in the blogosphere, the number of girls in the band and the number of times the press release calls them ''summery'', and then using an algorithm to turn that score into an 800-word write-up.
Scuse but this record is a total snooze. Just IMO.
so am I the only one here that likes it?
I'm not liking this conflicted position of the messages boards tastemakers, its leaving me in the unenviable position of needing to form my own opinion.
Nah, tugboat is balls-deep into this one.
Gross, Chickenchops, gross!
I like it.
I'd rate seeing her live as less than 4.3.
Oh right, I almost went to her Melb gig. Was wondering what she'd be like live.
M+N subscriber doesn't 'get' M+N not getting Pitchfork not ‘getting’ Catcall album. I'm going to go listen/read/review something I 'get'.
i like it too.
i have always had a problem with pitchfork reviewers seemingly trying to outdo each other with their verbose reviews. do people really read them to guide their purchases? maybe in the dark old days of limited internet and pre-torrent, but now, i would think most who hear about an album would just d/l or stream a song/album and work it out themselves.
by putting scores up, pitchfork allow everyone the opportunity to just glance at the site, check out what p4k think, and go from there. this is obviously great for their hitrate (and advertising).
when they dis an album it is rarely witty, they more often just come across as being unnecessarily malicious. I don't dig cat call but i don't dig that review either.
Huh? I'm saying that to me, her look and her sound reminds me a lot of Lady Gaga. I wasn't saying that to make her music seem worse for that fact, it's just to me she sounds a lot like a coolsie Lady Gaga. I don't mind Lady Gaga, and I don't mind this, but neither really do anything for me, but that's a separate story.
Yes, I did, but you said ''comparisonS'', so I assumed that it was something that had been said before.
For anyone who is staunchly against the M+N reports on Pitchfork news articles, 120 posts and some great, insightful discussion later kind of justifies it don't you think?
Just wait until M+N goes tabloid.
Subscription based?
''great insightful discussion?''
''Is M+N going to write a news story on every bad review she gets? Non-news.
Mess+Noise said 4 days ago: Yeah, probably.''
I really don't understand why M+N is so devoutly championing/defending Catcall. I'm sure she's an awesome person, yes she's got some great songs, but the album is only half-good.
What's stranger is that you routinely crap on any act doing anything remotely commercial or mainstream etc. (or just ignore them), but you lavish Catcall, despite the fact she employed 5+ songwriters/producers to help on the album including Bryan Jones who’s written with Guy Sebastian and other Idols. I don’t understand why you let that fly when you rubbish so many other bands for far less.
This isn’t an attack on Catcall (like I said, she’s got some great songs), more M+N’s inconsistent and contrived elitism.
M+N’s Pitchfork-style inconsistent and contrived elitism, surely.