Well this is completely off-topic, but it’s something that’s been bugging me for a while now. I check Pitchfork Media every once in a while to discover new bands… I rarely read their reviews as I don’t really like their style (imho you shouldn’t put too much thinking into a review… just tell us what you thought of the album… no need for metaphors and poetic allegories) anyway, I do happen to find a lot of the stuff that they review good so, I keep checking back every now and then to see what’s new…
Now maybe I’m just crazy (or blind) but I could swear there was a link at the bottom of their review page that lead to more reviews… (the link was just labeled “More…” ). Now I’ve been searching for like half an hour (in vain) for a way to access older reviews… Same goes for the Best New Music section.
I’m aware that I can still use the search to find reviews… but to me it’s kind of pointless… I don’t want to read reviews about bands/albums that I already know… if I love an album, a 2.0 rating from pitchfork isn’t going to make me hate a record… (just like a good review of an album that I hate isn’t going to change my mind…). What I liked about pitchfork was basically just browsing through their archive, chronologically, so I can discover new bands that recently released an album.
I remember seeing the word “more” in the URL when I was browsing the archive so I gave it a try ( http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/record_reviews/more ) but apparently this leads to what seems to be one of their first review page… (with reviews dating from 95-96… ). While I did enjoy reading some those old reviews (Beck Odelay, Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer etc..), it’s not really what I was looking for…
So please anyone let me know if I’m missing something obvious… HOW THE HELL DO I BROWSE THE REVIEWS ARCHIVE BY DATE (from recent to old)… and WHERE IS THAT CONVENIENT “more…” LINK… the one that used to be at the bottom of both the Review pages but also the Best New Music pages…
Can’t believe that it just dissapeared and no one mentioned it (I searched google, blogs etc. for any word about that but couldn’t find anything… am I really crazy?? Did that “more..” link ever existed??)
10 Comments
for me the same! do you have find something out meanwhile?
Maybe got something to do with this?
http://blogs.splunk.com/brian/2008/07/14/splunking-pitchfork-album-reviews/
Perhaps they didn’t like the bit about “So I downloaded all the record reviews using a simple python script.” Just a guess.
Hmmm this could very well be the reason why they pulled off the archive… this sucks! although I gotta admit the results are kind of interesting…
perhaps they simply want you to visit the site more often. anyway it’s not easy to find good alternatives.
Maybe this will help you. I had the same problem, but noticed that when I type anything past record_reviews/ it gave me 1970 in the title (well, almost anything, but I digress). It brought me to my current idea, which works:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/record_reviews/
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/record_reviews/2008 for example, will show all the reviews to date for this year. Hope this helps!
Vincent: That’s awesome! Thanks for the tip, I wasn’t aware of that ! :)
i used to love this link:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/search/record_reviews/query/page_1?min_score=7.8
is there still a way to search by min (or max) score?
/2008 or whatever year works great. what about p4k features archive? the /2008 trick doesnt work
http://web.archive.org/web/20010925012354/pitchforkmedia.com/
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