Pitchfork Cuts Off Music's Nose To Spite Its Face

Speaking for Paul Banks, Win Butler and Julian Casablancas, I hope that Pitchfork’s Ian Cohen never gets his hands on a time machine. In today’s review of Airborne Toxic Event’s eponymous debut album, Cohen closes with the following assertion, one so recklessly and stratospherically hyperbolic, that it has to be a put on:

In a way, The Airborne Toxic Event is something of a landmark record: This represents a tipping point where you almost wish Funeral or Turn on the Bright Lights or Is This It? never happened as long as it spared you from horrible imitations like this one, often sounding more inspired by market research than actual inspiration. Congrats, Pitchfork reader-- the Airborne Toxic Event thinks you're a demographic.

If only there was a way to avoid the Airborne Toxic Event album; unfortunately for Cohen (and apparently the rest of us), last week the President signed into law the bill that made ownership and daily listens of The Toxic Airborne Event mandatory for every American over the age of 10. Didn’t Bush realize that this law would ruin Interpol and the Strokes for countless listeners, who were now faced with what those bands’ records would one day wreak? Oh wait. Schmuck.

Maybe I’m being too hard on Cohen. After all, it must be disillusioning to encounter the first record in your life that sounds “more inspired by market research than actual inspiration.”