The thing about Bitte Orca is, well... Okay, here. I'll hazard a guess as to how my own relationship with this album will proceed:
1. Initiation listen, wherein I appreciation some verses and melodies, and even a song or two, but don't really feel a real connection. DONE.
2. Read Pitchfork review and Stereogum user opinions. Discover that everyone thinks this is better than Revolver. Stare at myself in the mirror for 84 minutes. DONE.
3. Give the record a second go. Find my foot tapping involuntarily at parts. Think, "Maybe I was wrong." Finish album. Think, "Nah, I'm right." DONE.
4. Start actually parsing the reviews of the people who love this album, and discover that these are the type of people who think that Panda Bear, Animal Collective, and The Field are the greatest bands of the 2000s; that Sticky Fingers is the Stones' worst album; and that any song that uses less than a 2:1 synthesizer-to-guitar ratio has failed completely. IN THE PROCESS.
5. In search for a win-win, execute the Harvey Dent Play. This move is simple, and it goes as such: Privately, not see anything special with the record and rank it considerably low on your totem pole of Things To Listen To; publicly, if or when someone inquires "Bitte Orca is the best of the decade, right?!", nod head ferociously. LOOKING FOR ALTERNATIVE PLAYS.
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My broader point, I guess, goes something like this. Pitchfork (and other related sites, but mostly Pitchfork) has a very heavy hand in the way the indie rock landscape is shaped these days. If they like it, it's liked; if not, tough cookies. Now granted, there's a lot of selection bias going on here, and the relationship clearly isn't one way. Pitchfork attained clout because many indie fans agreed with the site's general "taste," so it makes sense to conclude that albums reviewed well on Pitchfork will receive significantly more praise from the usual lemmings--after all, they like the same types of sounds as Pitchfork! But I'd argue that there's a larger self-fulfilling prophecy going on here, whereby Pitchfork says an album is good, and, irrespective of whether or not it actually is, it becomes accepted as good by the larger masses.
The possible reasons for this are myriad, and not all have roots in some deranged theory of a rising Pitchfork-run fascist state. First is the simple conformist need that is inherent in everyone, albeit to differing degrees. It seems other people are liking Bitte Orca, so I must like it too, regardless of whether I actually do. Second is that Pitchfork offers incomparable self-justification in this regard. It's a back-up force, a mainstay of music journalism that lets any fan of Bitte Orca shout "Well, it got a 9.2!" to anyone listening. While nobody ever actually does that in real life, I envision that there's a significant swath of hipsters who are just dying for someone to say "What is this awful music?" To that, they have a canned response totally packaged and ready for shipping. Third is another weird one: People seek to be "on another level" than their friends. More musically sophisticated, if you will. While everyone else is digging the new White Stripes or Jay-Z, Pitchfork readers take it as a badge of honor to be able to claim that they listen to something as esoteric and unaccessible as The Dirty Projectors. I understand music more than you do. This Bitte Orca hyper permits himself to be the sonic Galileo, crucified by contemporaries but way ahead of his time. Fourth is perhaps the most reasonable and nondouchey of the reasons. Good reviews serve a purpose: They afford a band more attention than they would have otherwise received. Take Bitte Orca. Let's say I picked this record up in a vaccuum. I listen to it once, maybe twice, and decide "meh," and Recycle Bin it goes. Now let's say I picked it up and gave it a few spins, and then read a Pitchfork review lambasting it. Well now I have a second opinion, evidence of "widespread discontent" that offers me ample reason to affirm my ever-hardening thoughts on the album. But in the third and final reality, I listen to the album twice, read Pitchfork's 9.2 review, and then I listen to the album again. Why? Because There Has To Be Something There. After all, the site with one of the best noses for good music is in love with it. Maybe it's just one of those records that takes a few listens, would go the thought process.
Of course, there is simply the possibility that I'm the odd man out here, and that this really is a record that everyone honestly enjoys. But I prefer to concoct unfalsifiable fantasies to suit my own predispositions about Pitchfork's reader base. And this image is only burnished by the lunatic ravings of the hipster crowd:
Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, who toured with the Dirty Projectors at some point earlier this century, declares that Bitte Orca is "not Physical Graffiti for 2K9; it’s 2K9’s Physical Graffiti.”Fuck. That.
