The Airborne Toxic Event, respond to Pitchfork, Take the High Road
An Open Letter to Pitchfork Media from the Airborne Toxic Event:
Dear Ian,
Thanks for your review of our record. It’s clear that you are a good writer and it’s clear that you took a lot of time giving us a thorough slagging on the site. We are fans of Pitchfork. And it’s fun to slag off bands. It’s like a sport — kind of part of the deal when you decide to be in a rock band. (That review of Jet where the monkey pees in his own mouth was about the funniest piece of band-slagging we’ve ever seen.)
We decided a long time ago not to take reviews too seriously. For one, they tend to involve a whole lot of projection, generally saying more about the writer than the band. Sort of a musical Rorschach test. And for another, reading them makes you too damned self-conscious, like the world is looking over your shoulder when the truth is you’re not a genius or a moron. You’re just a person in a band.
Plus, the variation of opinions on our record has bordered on absurd. Most of what’s been said has been positive, a few reviews have been on the fence and a few (such as yours) have been aggressively harsh. We tend not to put a lot of stock in this stuff, but the sheer disagreement of opinion makes for fascinating (if not a bit narcissistic) reading.
And anyway we have to admit that we found ourselves oddly flattered by your review. I mean, 1.6? That is not faint praise. That is not a humdrum slagging. That is serious fist-pounding, shoe-stomping anger. Many publications said this was among the best records of the year. You seem to think it’s among the worst. That is so much better than faint praise.
You compare us to a lot of really great bands (Arcade Fire, the National, Bright Eyes, Bruce Springsteen) and even if your intention was to cut us down, you end up describing us as: “lyrically moody, musically sumptuous and dramatic.” One is left only to conclude that you must think those things are bad.
We love indie rock and we know full well that Pitchfork doesn’t so much critique bands as critique a band’s ability to match a certain indie rock aesthetic. We don’t match it. It’s true that the events described in these songs really happened. It’s true we wrote about them in ways that make us look bad. (Sometimes in life you are the hero, and sometimes, you are the limp-dicked cuckold. Sometimes your screaming about your worst fears, your most trite jealousies. Such is life.) It’s also true that the record isn’t ironic or quirky or fey or disinterested or buried beneath mountains of guitar noodling.
As writers, we admire your tenacity and commitment to your tone (even though you do go too far with your assumptions about us). You’re wrong about our intentions, you’re wrong about how this band came together, you don’t seem to get the storytelling or the catharsis or the humor in the songs, and you clearly have some misconceptions about who we are as a band and who we are as people.
But it also seems to have very little to do with us. Much of your piece reads less like a record review and more like a diatribe against a set of ill-considered and borderline offensive preconceptions about Los Angeles. Los Angeles has an extremely vibrant blogging community, Silver Lake is a very close-knit scene of bands. We’re one of them. We cut our teeth at Spaceland and the Echo and have nothing to do with whatever wayward ideas you have about the Sunset Strip. That’s just bad journalism.
But that is the nature of this sort of thing. It’s always based on incomplete information. Pitchfork has slagged many, many bands we admire (Dr. Dog, the Flaming Lips, Silversun Pickups, Cold War Kids, Black Kids, Bright Eyes [ironic, no?] just to name a few), so now we’re among them. Great.
This band was borne of some very very dark days and the truth is that there is something exciting about just being part of this kind of thing. There’s this long history of dialog between bands and writers, NME ripping apart the Cure or Rolling Stone refusing to write about Led Zeppelin — so it’s a bit of a thrill that you have such a strong opinion about us.
We hear you live in Los Angeles. We’d love for you to come to a show sometime and see what we’re doing with these lyrically moody and dramatic songs. We’re serious about this stuff. You seem like a true believer when it comes to music and writing so we honestly think we can’t be too far apart. In any case, it would make for a good story.
all our best–
Mikel, Steven, Anna, Daren, Noah
the Airborne Toxic Event
Letter can also be viewed at the band’s website.
September 17th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
I have nothing but admiration for this band now. The beauty of the internet is that you are able to own your own message. Whatever message Pitchfork’s writer intended has now been efficiently countered. This response is excellent in that it takes the high road and doesn’t stoop to the level of a simple bar fight - that would be stooping to Pitchfork standards and that’s far too low.
September 17th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Totally agree, Dave. They could not have responded any better.
September 17th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
I like this band, and I like the Album. It’s good to see someone write a good letter without stuff like LOL or OMG
September 17th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Pitchfork as a website earned my disdain when they took an interview with Steve Albini from another website, downloaded the clip and presented it on their site instead of linking back to the original poster. The hard working interviewer and camera person deserved their hits for that (Albini did the whole thing on stilts AND played the guitar).
In the interest of radical transparency, it bears mentioning that I was managing editor of said site at the time (I didn’t do the interview or run the camera, wasn’t there at all), and I’ve had the better part of a bottle of Cabernet so my normal inhibition against posting such bold-faced boo hooing is way down, but suffice it to say that P-Fork wasn’t my favorite dot com after that.
So this band is now my new favorite group in spite of never having heard them. I have to stop the Trans Am disc spinning currently and take a listen.
Having been a music critic, I can happily parent Zappa and agree with him for the most part; and I paraphrase “Music journalism is done by people who can’t write, for people who can’t read.” Doom on you, Pitchfork!
September 17th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
oops, I mean to write “parrot”, not PARENT. Blame the wine.
September 17th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3592734
i wonder what josh howard thinks about radical transparency these days?
September 17th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
[...] The Airborne Toxic Event [we'll leave the Don Delillo reference aside for now,] which contained an open letter to a ‘music critic,’ Ian Cohen, who works for the indie music fans’ online bible, [...]
September 18th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Since Pitchfork has blindly decided to hate everything Dr. Dog does, I feel that I can trust their negative reviews to point me in the direction of music that I might actually enjoy. I’m hunting down this band right now.
Thanks, Pitchfork!
September 18th, 2008 at 9:51 am
I think this makes a lot of sense. Mikel wrote about music for awhile, and I don’t see why artists can’t respond to their critics. More discussion is a good thing.
We had TATE on Rehearsal Space earlier this summer. They’re really great, and their live show is incredible.
Here’s the video if you’re curious:http://www.zoom-in.com/spotlights/rehearsal_space_the_airborne_toxic_event
September 18th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Oh, no. A band should NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER respond to a review, and I don’t care if the review writer took the time to mention each band member’s mother by name. It’s bad form and completely unnecessary. It just turns into a “see-I-can-write-just-as-good-as-you” contest, it doesn’t prove or change one damn thing, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the music. If that happened to me, I’d just take it out on the audience that night and kick some extra ass at the show. That’s a much more useful and productive channel for whatever frustration or disappointment the band may be feeling. Besides, it’s never about one review anyway.
September 18th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
@Mike, then I have to presume that you don’t understand the power of the internets? Here’s my other thoughts on the TATE incident.
http://www.social-cache.com/2008/09/owning-your-message-online-the-airborne-toxic-event-unusual-social-media-adherents
September 18th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Mike,
I’d advise a struggling band to do just the opposite. Send a personal letter to the reviewer thanking them profusely for the review. But only do this for bad reviews.
“Dear Johnny Reviewer,
Your remarks about the new album are so spot on I don’t know where to begin. Thank you so much for giving it up for the band. Your words mean so much. We were tired, exhausted and feeling low after our last show, but your piece inspired us and we played two more shows that same night. We’re just doing it for the kids, keeping it real and never giving up.We owe it all to your kind words.”
Chances are the reviewer, who threw the CD in the bin last week after listening to 90 seconds of it (10 seconds per track) won’t even remember they wrote a crap review and glow with delight. Speaking as a former music critic, I can tell you that yes, we really can be THAT DUMB. In the interests of radical transparency, I must admit that I have done this, but only when the band was overtly discriminatory or belligerently stupid. So yeah, I did it all the time. But only in college.
September 19th, 2008 at 7:59 am
@Dave
You presume incorrectly and your blog hasn’t shed any light on why you think it’s okay for a band to do this. I stand firmly by my comments.
September 19th, 2008 at 8:26 am
@Mike,
Let’s take a large example - Radiohead. Tom Yorke said in an interview with David Byrne that one of the reasons that they didn’t release any pre-release copies of their last album was because they didn’t want “some snarky blogger to slag it off and then have everyone pile in as if that person’s word was gospel.”
We live in a world of minimum attention span. If folks who hadn’t heard T.A.T.E. just read Cohen’s PFork review then his opinion would be the only one they took note of. With T.A.T.E. responding there are now two opinions out there. Artists can no longer sit idly by and let other people own their messaging online unless they really don’t give a damn what’s being said about them…
September 19th, 2008 at 9:39 am
@Dave
Utterly ridiculous. You’re the one who doesn’t seem to understand the power of the internets. One Google search and i’ve got more opinions about ATE’s (I prefer that acronym) new record than I could ever sit through. Some of them are kind, others aren’t. As a consumer of music, I have so much information at my fingertips it’s silly to even suggest that the totality of my opinion of a band could be determined by one review on one music blog. Pitchfork have defecated on many bands’ blood, sweat and tears before and they’ll do it again. Does that matter one iota in the grand scheme of a band’s career? No it certainly does not.
September 19th, 2008 at 9:58 am
@Mike–I’m sure Dave can defend himself, but it bears mentioning that you Googling the ATE stuff isn’t typical behavior for someone who’s got a five second attention span and is reading Pitchfork for what they assume is a reliable opinion on a new band.
And since even Lester Bangs was horribly wrong about a few of his calls, and since P-Fork ain’t got no Lester Bangs, I’d say TATE is spot on in rising to their own defense once in a while. If for no other reason than to stir up the pot…JUST LIKE THIS.
Look at all the free press they got out of it. I’d call that…MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:04 am
@Joe
If somebody makes a decision on a band based on one review, positive or negative, then they deserve what they get. There is no excuse not to be an informed consumer in this day and age. None.
September 19th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Well, that may have been a great response to a bad review, but after suffering through about a minute of “Sometime Around Midnight” I have to say Ian Cohen might’ve been on to something.
Then again, it’s all subjective isn’t it?
September 20th, 2008 at 8:14 am
@Mike, ok calm down. I think we’ve reached that wonderful point of agreement. Reading your last reply to me made me realize what was missing from my two posts - rock criticism is dead and we need to accept that. As you say, one quick Google search gives you all the opinions you would ever need about a band’s music. Arguably those results would trend toward the positive if a bands fans are out there waving the flag for them but then it becomes a “who cares” situation.
We don’t need Pitchfork to give us the opinion of just anyone who can type, it would be great if they dropped the points ranking system altogether and brought on music critics with decent backgrounds in popular culture and modern music history. Then I might trust their reviews. Unfortunately its the public who love the points system - everyone seems to love lists and rankings, it’s as if they are living vicariously through the hacks like Cohen, waiting longingly for the slagging off in public that they think a band deserves….fun times!
September 20th, 2008 at 10:50 am
I fucking hate Airborne Toxic Event. I live in L.A. and I can’t stand them. They are a complete rip-off. There is NOTHING unique or original about them. I completely agree with the Pitchfork’s review and love them for writing the truth about a dog shit band that spends too much time sucking their own dick.
October 8th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
I heard these guys on the radio (WFNX) and my immediate reaction was “HOLY FUCK, everything about this song reminds me of other bands.” The vocals reminded me of Conor Oberst, the persistent, freight train guitar reminded me of LCD Soundsystem’s “All my Friends,” and the strings were definitely from an Arcade Fire song. I was going to call them out, but then I checked Pitchfork, and welp, they beat me to the punch. And much more eloquently so.