Needles & Grooves

Because Pitchfork's ratings are decided by an editorial board, independent of the actual review, based on what sort of tastemakers they feel like being any given week. I don't even pay attention to them anymore.

@kvetcha —I only look at Pitchfork to see what new music has been released. Their reviews have been pretty bad for the past few years at least but it’s still a good source of finding new music for me

Don't exert too much energy seeking logic in anything Pitchfork does. They're alright as as a source of entertainment, but that's about it (IMO anyway).

I'm with @MikeH. Pitchfork at this point are only good as a source of music news. They stopped being relevant to cultural zeitgeist a while ago, probably because most of their readers who looked to them to form an opinion for them moved on to letting Anthony Fantano tell them what they should like.

People seem upset about this for some reason, but it's just a designation seperate from the rating. Same reason Anthony Fantano doesn't wear his signature yellow flannel for each release he loves. It's no big deal.