Pitchfork Rebuttal No. 5: Bats and Mice "Believe It, Mammals"

I found another "gem" in Pitchfork Media's review archive today when I stumbled across this piece, in which Alison Fields, who may be the most self-aware of Pitchfork's reviewers that I've had the pleasure of reading, basically talked about herself throughout her entire review of a damn fine album before slapping it with a six-out-of-ten and then going off to do whatever asshole hipsters like her do.

Fields spends way too long talking about the Sleepytime Trio, a loud-as-hell rager of a band that preceded Bats and Mice and included two of its members, (she also mentions that she lived in the town where the label that released their records got its start, and that she went to like, all of their shows in college but doesn't really dig that anymore now, and that she had a totally wack haircut back then) and then laments the fact that Bats and Mice doesn't sound a whole lot like them.

There's not a single instance of extended clanging, shattering guitar, fuzzy, unintelligible samples, or vicious yelping on the whole album.

Well, duh, it was four or five fucking years later. Bands change. Musicians do different things. If these guys had made a Sleepytime Trio album, Fields probably would have written a review about how done "that sound" is instead of longing for it.

But a couple of grafs down, she writes that the album's opener "erupts into a considerable amount of screaming and dissonance at the chorus.

All I can really do here is hold down the 'shift' button on my keyboard and then push the 'forward slash' button. When I do that, it makes this symbol:

?

She also gives the band a few points for their "consistency."

Again: ?

The most puzzling part is how easily Fields could have discovered that Bats and Mice weren't really meant to sound a whole lot like the work of the members previous bands. How could she have done that? Well, for starters, she could have familiarized herself with their back catalogue. Sure, the only thing Bats and Mice released prior to "Believe It, Mammals" was a three-song ep that didn't make a whole lot of heads turn despite its fairly solid nature. But how could Fields have known that, or what it mapped out as far as a sound for the band? Well, she could have read this review of it, which appeared in the publication she works for and which I found by using the web site's simple search feature.

I don't know.