Nashville Music Blog

Check out the rosewood: Carrie Brownstein, pre-blog days

​Say what you will about NPR's music coverage--and yes, Jody Rosen's DORF Matrix should be part of what gets said--but former Sleater-Kinney guitarist/vocalist/badass Carrie Brownstein's Monitor Mix blog has been especially great lately. Soon after her very smart post on how mistakes = chemistry in rock music comes this recent roundtable on what it means anymore to be a record label. With the Internet making it so easy to discover music and obtain it directly from the artist or for free from network peers, the role of the record label has certainly changed. Yeah, you may have heard something like that before, but Brownstein's chat with several key indie label personnel--Maggie Vail and Portia Sabin (Kill Rock Stars), Gerard Cosloy (Matador), Mac McCaughan (Merge), Robb Nansel (Saddle Creek) and Chris Swanson and Darius Van Arman (Jagjaguwar/Secretly Canadian/Dead Oceans)--makes for an engaging read, even it's not exactly surprising to hear that touring is still real important and stuff. For esses and gees, I've pulled out the part where they talk about Pitchfork! Check it, if you haven't already:

Carrie Brownstein: Aside from putting out good music, what's the single most effective thing a label can do to get people to buy their music?
Gerard Cosloy: Not sure what the single most efficient thing would be (other than, you know, the Pitchfork 9.1), but getting people excited is never easy to quantify or predict.
Carrie Brownstein: Does a Pitchfork 9.1 help?
Maggie Vail : Absolutely.
Gerard Cosloy: Sadly, yes. A Pitchfork 9.1 is more influential to the audience and the retailers than a Rolling Stone or New York Times review.
Carrie Brownstein: What does a Pitchfork 4.5 do?
Portia Sabin: A 4.5 can kill a record. Unfortunately.
Mac McCaughan: Agree on the Pitchfork thing, though I do think that a 9.1 helps more than an average number hurts.
Robb Nansel: I'd be inclined to say a high Pitchfork number helps; a low Pitchfork number is irrelevant.
Gerard Cosloy: There remain great things that aren't even on the Pitchfork radar.
Mac McCaughan: Impossible!
Gerard Cosloy: The Beatles.
Chris Swanson: Cold War Kids were killed on their debut and did quite well.
Gerard Cosloy: Just having a number next to a review discourages anyone from reading.
Mac McCaughan: Yes, and often the review will be enthusiastic and then the number is like "6.9" and you're like, "Thanks for nothing."
Portia Sabin: There's a difference between getting an average/decent review and being a band who is loved by Pitchfork. We have two bands who are doing well despite being basically ignored by Pitchfork right now.
Chris Swanson: Anything under a 7.6 or 7.7 is a non-review.
Gerard Cosloy: If any of us were really great at galvanizing public sentiment/handing out the learning lessons, we'd be less dependent on Pitchfork. And that's our fault, not theirs.
Mac McCaughan: Hard to galvanize such a diffuse group of people, though I know we all try.
Gerard Cosloy: Pitchfork's rise to prominence [also] coincides with Rolling Stone being 36 pages.
Mac McCaughan: It's a pamphlet.
Portia Sabin: And full of dudes and old, old bands.
Gerard Cosloy: And newspapers scrapping what little pop criticism they offered.
Mac McCaughan: What I don't understand is online magazines that could compete as strong voices in the field -- Salon, for instance -- scrapping their music coverage.
Darius Van Arman: I don't think Pitchfork is the problem. I think others just need to step up. For whatever perceived power Pitchfork has, there's no real obstacle to someone doing what they do, and maybe doing it better.
Gerard Cosloy: Agreed. The only ones I know who are in the "f--- Pitchfork" camp are the ones who just got a bad review. Start your own f---ing music site.

[Monitor Mix]