Unprintable since 1996, viagra an apt subtitle to accompany the cute, story miniature archive headline, order No 1. Winter 2014: the inaugural issue of The Pitchfork Review. With the making of their very own print quarterly, Pitchfork has cemented itself as the go-to critic of music culture. And yes, despite the obvious hilarity of Portlandia’s Pitchfork jab, Pitchfork will remain on my bookmark bar at least as long as their reviews, news and videos continue to feed up to the minute info regarding indie mainstays and newcomers alike.

It was only a matter of time for Pitchfork’s print edition, considering the academic lexicon that is their collective editorial work- on album reviews in particular. Much like literary criticism, it isn’t enough for a reviewer to make simple contemporary references or connections, he or she must first trace a genealogy of sound or tell an interesting, journalistic back-story before diving into a review of the music itself. Not that anyone should be too upset by this – there is an intrigue in discovering who a musician is, what their album really means. And who doesn’t want to learn new words, whether exciting adjectives to describe music, or intellectual jargon one might more readily find reading Foucault or Barthes- this keeps Pitchfork’s authority and mysticism in tact.

In fact, the very first article of No. 1 is a meditation on the UK weekly music publication scene of former decades, in which author Simon Reynolds reminds us how “Worth Their Wait” it was for music fans to be informed weekly, via three major music rags, of the going-ons of the indie underground- a nostalgia for a physical medium which offered an “all-enveloping experience that allowed you to escape from your real surroundings, with all their dreary limitations, and achieve vicarious access to the place where all the action was happening and all the ideas were percolating” (18)- before turning at the very end of his piece towards Roland Barthe’s idea on the romantic lover as “precisely… the one who waits”: for something like the aforementioned transcendental reading experience, I suppose. Can our generation truly love in a time when we don’t have to wait for anything?!?! Still, Reynolds does not forget to double back on his opinion; he gives due recognition to the irreversibility of contemporary culture- in the age of the internet, all corners of the music market get found and posted about in seconds- but asserts, nevertheless, “why …shouldn’t [one] attempt a calm and clear assessment of what’s been lost with the collapse and disappearance of the old ways” (14). When it’s all said and done, Reynolds piece represents the central aim of the journal itself- what is lost in our current approach to music, and what ideas are still alive in it that might help us, not to turn back the clock, but reclaim humanity lost, our forgotten connection to the world in the face of infinite vice.

The rest of the long-form entries provide many worthwhile stories and ideas about music and the way we live. From Otis Redding’s rise to prominence and tragic early death (he came to fame at the Monterey (CA) Pop Festival, his southern soul sound perfect for “the white, record-buying hippies” (50) of America), to an interview with metal rocker Glenn Danzig on the non-existence of an alternative underground. Each article features rare pictures/posters, as well as fun, funky and colorful illustrations. In between articles, readers are treated to three page comics by some of today’s best artists, and the middle of the journal features a raw photo compilation of last year’s Pitchfork Music Festival in Paris. The Pitchfork Review has an enhanced aesthetic, prettier than the website because you’re actually holding it in your hands, and the stories do provide solid food for thought as they give a window into cultural moments, shifts in societal trends that were driven by the music industry.

The back section, titled Control P, is a collection of extended web articles, a chance to expand upon ideas from the site. Notable here are: a talk with the female punk outfit, Savages, and their insistence on music as art, as a space for emancipation and near anarchy, Danny Brown’s self alienation in the face of commercial bullshit, the genius of Vampire Weekend’s new album and its approach to our generations’, “post-HOPE”, “millennial” complex, and a look back on the feeling, meaning and ultimate value of cassettes. Each of these shorter pieces have something meaningful to point out, all while making sure not to come off as too patronizing, as if the subject matter is, tragically perhaps, for better or worse.

Both the long form articles and shorter back entries offer glimpses into what is and what could or should be; isn’t this our modern peril? Like Barthes points out, we are surrounded by a myth-symbol saturated society; everything is market-oriented. So weren’t the UK music weekly rags simply a prologue to the consumption of the underground music scene of today? And are the ideas posed in The Pitchfork Review just romantic dog bones to chew on? Or is the exponentially fleeting optimism of an existing “underground” cause for more serious concern? If Lennon’s “Imagine” couldn’t save the world after the counter culture 60s, what hope is there for music to free us from victimization in the future? Is modern music, then, just variation on a timeless, invincible theme- like Angel Olsen’s beautiful new album shares, “everything is tragic/it all just falls apart”- or are we, now, closer to an apocalyptic end, so technologically close and interconnected yet so hopelessly alienated from one another, so at the mercy of systematic progress and development that we could never actually stop the tide from rising.

Pitchfork doesn’t try and answer this question, but I think it leans towards the latter: we can’t get back what we’ve lost. And yet, while this seems true on a large scale, who’s to say we can’t reclaim humanity individually, slowly, one baby step at a time? If nothing else, The Pitchfork Review guided my thoughts well: not longing for the past or despairing for the future, but focusing on the decisions I can make right now.

BNR 8.5