Playlist Reviews

Aside from suggesting that masturbation is a "more defiant act of self love and self care," Pitchforks stab at the best onanistic songs by female pop stars is largely devoid of politics, which is refreshing. This is truly a playlist that speaks for itself (just as its subjects do other things for themselves), but its in interesting to note in passing that this contains a couple of tracks that are not on Spotify or Apple Music, and, to date, has not been uploaded to Pitchforks Apple site. Were all curious to see how Pitchfork ongoing relationship with Apple will affect its core, site content, and this suggests that maybe their business relationship isnt getting in the way of a good (if click-baity) playlist.

What’s This Playlist All About? While the buoyant alt-rock band is a bit mysterious about the meaning behind the playlist, it appears to at least be linked to the release of their upcoming third album, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships. It’s also worth noting that they’ve often alluded to the playlist’s name, like in this Red Bull Music interview: “The faded splendour—beautiful pop songs so distorted they create a kind of faded splendour.”What You Get: All sorts of indie rock treasures, from Madchester to the Midwest, starting with Ride’s swirling beauty “Vapour Trail,” The Replacements’ timeless piano banger “Androgynous,” and New Order’s damn-near-perfect “Ceremony.” Later, we’re treated to beautiful distortion at its most sublime with The Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Just Like Honey” and My Bloody Valentine’s “Soon.”Best Surprise: The searing splendor of perpetual drone/noise-rock underdogs Ramleh with 1995’s “Chicago Balloon Riders.”How Awesome is This Playlist? Infinite thumbs up for this one. For the budding indie rock snob, this is a hell of a starter kit.

For anyone who grew up in the 90s—particularly those of us stuck in a landlocked state far from any coast—the Pacific Northwest had a certain sort of exotic mysticism. Yes, exotic. And even if your only mental image of the region consisted of constant rain and flannel-wearing lumberjacks (guilty as charged), it was the music that came out of places like Seattle, Olympia, and Portland that could transport you to a land of outsiders who were weird and loud and as disaffected as you. The Pitchfork staff attempted to capture this storied land with their 50 Best Indie Rock Albums of the Pacific Northwest, which covers the regions output over the past "20-ish" years.The staff purposely excluded "grunge," which writer (and Pac Northwest musician himself) Sean Nelson explains by saying: "because most of the bands did back then, too." It seems like a fairly weak argument, and one that gets at the core of the inherent problem with these types of lists—mostly, where do you draw the line at what indie rock actually means? (Or even what is the Pacific Northwest—does Beck playing with a bunch of guys who live there actually count?) Because of this, anyone that may have been even loosely associated with grunge at one point (say, Mudhoney, The Screaming Trees, or The Melvins) is missing here, which seems slightly egregious.Instead, Pitchfork focuses on artists who were intentionally withdrawing from that type of "bigness," as Nelson puts it. In essence, the aesthetic here is founded on intricate, eclectic guitar work all cloaked in that timid, melancholic grayness thats best encapsulated in their No. 1 pick: Elliott Smith. These boundaries theyve established actually serve our purposes well, because it makes for a pretty solid playlist, one worth cranking on—you guessed it—a rainy day. And, if anything, a playlist like this is a good way of introducing fans of bands like The Postal Service and Fleet Foxes to artists way less revered, but just as influential—like fuzzy, abrasive punks Wipers and experimental post-hardcore greats Unwound.Its also worth noting that Nelson, who only wrote Pitchforks intro for the list, quickly made his rebuttal by publishing his own picks for Seattle alt weekly The Stranger. His, alongside colleague Dave Segals, list is far harder and heavier, and way more playful. Mostly, it does a better job of proving that indie rock from the Pacific Northwest isnt always so damn sad.

As an imaginative abbreviation of the phrase “gangster funk,” and a sound inspired by the Ohio Players’ “Funky Worm” synthesizer melody as well as Zapp’s car stereo wrecker “More Bounce to the Ounce,” G-funk dominated West Coast hip-hop for the better part of a decade, and even longer if you add post-G-funk homage like YG’s “BPT.” So why limit this best-of roundup to a mere 30 tracks? Music journalists Max Bell and Torii MacAdams don’t really explain why, though they acknowledge the “glaring omissions” that result from such a truncated list. Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Warren G, and DJ Quik get two selections each (the number-one pick, Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg’s “Nuthin’ But a G Thang,” is an Apple Music exclusive, hence its absence from the Spotify playlist). But there’s nothing from Mack 10, Soopafly, 2Pac’s infamous alter ego Makaveli, Daz Dillinger’s highly underrated Revenge, Retaliation and Get Back, or Cube’s supergroup Westside Connection. Wait, no “Bow Down?” These must be East Coast writers.

Whats This Playlist All About? The scrappy Glaswegian rockers prep the release of their fifth studio album, In Your Own Sweet Time, by updating their mix of current listening habits with songs that sound nothing like their own.What Do You Get? A classic Scottish sing-along kicks it all off, naturally, followed by a traditional Irish folk song about a horse race, and a Chas & Dave pub essential. But soon enough Metallica kicks in, and then some old-school rock n roll (Chuck Berry), essential 80s pop (Madonna, Men At Work, Prince), and that one song by Gotye (remember it?!).Guiltiest Pleasure: Of all the goodies here, its got to be ABBA. ABBA always wins this game.Greatest Discovery: If you have it in you, dont miss the chugging, gurgling, slightly deranged death metal assault "Sirens Halo" from Guttural Slug (great name).Will This Playlist Have You Daydreaming of the Lush Lands of Scotland? Not at all, but it does make us want to reminisce for hours at the pub (except for that Guttural Slug song, of course).

When POTUS starts creating playlists, you know the curation game has gotten crazy. Obama created two playlists: one for the day and one for night-- almost how Four Tet organized his new album into morning and night sides. I slightly prefer the night playlist, though the day one does include Dylans "Tombstone Blues," which takes as its subjects rape, political hegemony, delusion and the military industrial complex, among other things. I can say that I genuinely love at least a dozen tracks on the evening playlists, and its really great to see the president such as fan of headwrap rap, neo soul and Beyoncé.

While self-seriousness tends to rule both mainstream EDM and underground dance music alike, Stockholms Studio Barnhus label follows more lighthearted impulses, with a playful streak of gentle absurdism informs twinkling deep house tunes sourced from sentimental disco, R&B, and easy listening. Founded in 2010 by Axel Boman, Kornél Kovács, and Petter Nordkvist, Barnhus taps a similar vibe as DJ Kozes Pampa label (which might not be surprising, since Boman has recorded some of his best work for Pampa). Bright colors, squirrelly melodies, and unusual textures are the order of the day, and although an undercurrent of melancholy runs beneath even its most whimsical releases, theres no one style or sound to sum up all the labels output; the catalog runs from swirly sampledelia to convoluted synth jams, and from lo-fi tone poems to double-time footwork jams.More than 16 hours long, this frequently updated playlist gathers the labels entire catalog, from a debut EP (Good Children Make Bad Grown Ups) drenched in soul and big-band jazz to Kornél Kovács debut album, The Bells, one of 2016s finest house long-players. For best results, select shuffle mode, and spend the rest of your day flipping between day-dream reveries and delirious rug-cutting—all of it with a giddy smile pasted from ear to ear.

Whats This Playlist All About?: The Radiohead icon continues to thrill die-hard fans and alienate casual ones with this woozy, wordless sound manifesto curated for Pitchfork’s Day for Night Festival in 2017. In his words: “Its not this years music, its just the music that comes out of my walls at home.”What You Get: Exotic blips, beats, and strips of sound laced, looped, and left to disintegrate (sometimes literally) into moody ambient and avant-garde pieces. The mix is bookended by Dutch artist Machinefabrieks aqueous world of rippling drones, but in between it slips through dark, entrancing dream worlds (like John Luther Adams "The Light That Fills the World") and eclectic sound sculptures molded from our most deep-seated anxieties (William Basinskis "dlp 2.1"). Think "Treefingers" translated through advanced alien technologies.Greatest Discovery: A Winged Victory for the Sullen—the name itself is perhaps more Thom Yorke than Thom Yorke could ever be. But even better is the European duos gorgeous, string-soaked, ambient-neoclassical arrangements, two of which are featured here. (By the way, their song titles are just as awesome.)Will This Playlist Bore You? Lets say theres a 50/50 chance that, yes, it will. Keep in mind: This is mood music that can move you to the core, but only at just the right, reflective moment.

The most striking vocalists have always had an otherworldly quality about them, from D’Angelo’s subverbal warble to angelic high tenor of Smokey Robinson. Thom Yorke is no different, and, like those other singers, he’s able to convey something deeply humanistic in his otherness. Stripped from the context of Radiohead’s heavily textured sonic experimentation, the beauty of Yorke’s voice is arguably more evident here. It’s also interesting how you can track the progression of modern alternative music through this playlist, how it evolves from the sadsack balladry of the late 90s and early naughts to the IDM-informed formalistic experimentation of the past few years.

The productions of Montreal musician Tim Hecker move electronic music to unexpected places. His early work fused the dry, pulsating rhythms of techno with the bare minimalism of Brian Eno. Alongside other avante garde electronic artists and collaborators Ben Frost and Oneohtrix Point Never, Hecker has carved out a music vocabulary that mines the ethereal underpinnings of dark industrial spaces. Aaron from Beats has compiled a great playlist of his influences, which range from the modern classical of Philip Glass to shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine.