"If you're the type who's noticed Pitchfork's gradual ideological shift away from considering indie rock the de facto center of the musical universe, you've probably also cottoned on to Daft Punk's unique standing within that world"
No disrespect to the writer's love for Daft Punk (not one of my favorites, but I don't hate them or anything), but really... did I miss that memo? There's been an ideological shift? I guess it would depend on what one would define as falling under the "indie rock" banner, but let's do an experiment shall we. If I say click on Pitchfork "reviews" right now and survey back from today to March 27th we get a sampling of coverage. Let's group into loose categories :
Hip-Hop : 4 reviews
Reggae : 1 review
Other : 4 reviews
Indie-Rock/Rock/Post-Punk/etc... : 31 reviews.
That's batting 77% for team indie rock there kids.
Sure, they can cover whatever the hell they want. It's their site. And I'm not discounting columns and features here, but I'm just saying... a shift I do not see...and given that both Nightmares On Wax & Coldcut got shit on recently, this Daft Punk CD is about the only thing of "electronic/dance" variety I've seen get any love recently there. Barring maybe a Ghostly release which I vaguely recall them liking.
"Revered in DJ circles, respected on singles charts, and still the dance act you're most likely to hear at an indie party"
I totally don't want to be invited to that party. It would be like being at party where people say they like Johnny Cash but they're not really down with country music. Or even worse the dreaded "Legend is a great album but I'm not really down with reggae in general" party.
Token eclecticism is the worst form of music crime.
