Always one to push the boundaries of music criticism, Pitchfork has given the new British Sea Power album Do You Like Rock Music? the dreaded “U.2.” In other words, on their infamous 1-10 rating scale, Pitchfork decided to slot BSP’s new offering somewhere between “Echo and the Bunnymen” and “New Order.” I think. Who knows?
What’s next? Is the new Raveonettes album going to receive a “Velvet.Underground,” or was that so 2003? Does this signal that we can start a new scale that features a letter and a number, such as B.34 or GC.161? I mean, anything is possible now. Down with 1-10 rating index hegemony. Down the slippery slope we go!
I think the most important thing to note is that, amid the tumult of this crazy world of ours, with sup-prime lending meltdowns and Super Bowl upsets, we could always look to that one beacon of constancy — the P4k rating scale. Sure, it was arbitrary and always wrong, objectively, but at least it was consistently arbitrary (and consistently funny).
It’s a sad day, indeed.
