The Crazed Man’s Words

“ELT” by Wilco is my favorite song right now and for probably the past year. Off of one of their older albums, Summerteeth, this song’s course states “Every little thing is gonna tear you apart” and for some reason it resonates with me. The song is extremely catchy and much more pop-oriented than a lot of the other folksy tunes that Jeff Tweedy and his ensemble jam out. Seriously check out this band, listen to all their albums, and tell me that Summerteeth isn’t the best.

Also check out Mermaid Avenue Volume 1, a Woody Guthrie found-lyric tribute-esque album performed by members of Wilco (primarily Tweedy) and Billy Bragg as well as a few other personnel.

Pitchforkmedia is a haven for those in the need of independent, popular, and otherworldly music information. This site details musicians through in-depth album reviews, often celebrity hosted interviews, and archives all its stories to allow you to become an expert on anybody. In the past few years the site has become the premiere place for audiophiles to get the stories about events in the music world, but thankfully the increase in traffic hasn’t changed the site- they steer clear of flashy, gawker-esque fanfare of lead singers with drug habits.

The main page divides the site into three columns (News, Record Reviews, and the Forkcast) with smaller delineations past the fold (Best New Music, Features, Previous Week’s News). Every page is time-stamped red with the date, if not the time, leading with the latest stories first. A dark grey, bolded text covers all the titles with a lighter grey underneath for the subtitle of every page. A cloud-like mix of blues and off-whites mixes behind all the text and pictures (one per section).

The only two advertisements on the home page and other pages are a heading banner and a side box; they mix between upcoming album releases of artists already on the site and other websites were you can download music. Pitchfork itself doesn’t propagate illegal file-sharing but rather their links for downloadable or streaming music are often from the musicians own pages, be it MySpace or something similar.

The site is very attractive because of the simple lay-out that is easy for anyone to navigate. It definitely has a core group of followers, independent music junkies, but anyone and everyone should check it out to see what Pitchfork says about a band. For once that group makes it big we will all wonder where they came from and what others said first.