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It’s no secret that RTP are huge fans of St. Vincent. We’ve been informally reviewing (praising) Marry Me for the past couple months, so no need for a formal critique here. I say we review another review instead.

For once I agree with Pitchfork, and my review of their review of St. Vincent’s Marry Me is that it was relatively solid, and actually pretty right on as far as I’m concerned.

One of the best teachers I’ve ever had always told me that he doesn’t care to know anything about who artists are as people, but rather, he prefers to focus on each piece of their work as a freestanding being in and of itself, impervious to influence by unnecessary details like its creator’s political or sexual affiliation, or even what they look like.

It’s hard for me — and for most, I’d wager — to not be interested in the artists I love, or even moreso, the artists I can’t stand, but he has a good point. And this is where I often disagree with Pitchfork. They usually bring so much baggage with them that the outcome of each of their reviews ultimately ends up having little or nothing to do with the piece of work listed in the headline.

For the most part, I think Pitchfork managed to avoid this with their review of Marry Me, but Josh Klein — a reviewer I’m not that familiar with at all, and therefore don’t know if he makes this a habit like most of the rest of Pitchfork’s reviewers — couldn’t help bringing a bit of Annie Clark history with him at the outset of the review. No one can be sure if this affected his assessment of the record, but does Clark’s relationship to Sufjan Stevens or the Polyphonic Spree really have anything to do with the merit of the record in question?

Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. If I were my old philosophy professor I would probably steer clear of Pitchfork altogether. But let’s not kid ourselves. That would be kind of like trying to avoid Microsoft products at the office, or at least at my office. One can dream, though.

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