December 23, 2004

Musical George: Is there a site analogous to rottentomatoes.com, but for CDs? That is, is there a site that summarizes the body of reviews for a given record? Also, feel free to share any other excellent music reference resources.
posted by wo mu si 20 years ago
  • Great question. I have been wondering that myself. If Jerry Garcia were still around, he would undoubtedly have the answer.
  • I like metacritic.
  • Just don't pay any attention to Rolling Stone's reviews. I bought Beck's "Sea Change" because they said it was comparable to Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks". It turned out to be a whiny piece of shit.
  • Splendid has a more limited focus (independently recorded music), but new daily content makes it worth checking. Often they have clips of stuff too. On holiday til January 3.
  • OR You can just start from the top, and go to the TOFU HUT. Or any of the links in forksy's MP3 thread. FORKS IS TEH MP3 JESUS. HIYA FORKS!
  • I posted this before, but I'll still give props to Rate Your Music, a website which includes reviews of albums written by site members.
  • And Sea Change is a great album.
  • It is just me, or do lilnemo's links not work?
  • They don't work.
  • There's a link to Forky's stuff on the front page.
  • Epitonic doesn't present a summary of reviews, but they have a number of different editors and writers and I like a lot of their critiques. The radio station is good, as well. Tofu Hut is a blog with a short list of downloadables, but links to countless other music blogs and sites.
  • Pazz & Jop, yo. (Second metacritic, dispute pitchfork, although they have their moments.) And rocket88- just because you read one review you disagreed with doesn't mean the source of the review is worthless. Although it just so happens that RS is.
  • Second Pazz & Jop, third Metacritic. The best part about P&J's annual lists is their grip on reality. People who don't write music reviews for a living actually buy those albums. The singles are played on radio, heard and known. Individual critics may suffer various degrees of pretension separating them from reality, but collectively they do have an idea what's going on. Pitchfork is endlessly amusing.
  • http://www.peoplesforum.com has a music forum, called "I Spit on Your Groove." They discuss rather than rate, and they're harsh and somewhat insular, but the participants know music.
  • I also recommend NYPLM for pop info; just google it. Also ILM.