For years on end, Pitchfork Media took great pride in lambasting anything put out under the moniker Nine Inch Nails. They were one of the few publications to write anything bad about the Fragile, giving the album a 2 on a scale of 10, and taking their next NIN review down to 0.2 out of 10. (Despite what's sometimes said in the press now, The Fragile was an astounding success among critics. I know because I read damn near every review at the time) It was clear that they were, at best, trolling.
However, in recent years, the 'fork has been warming up to the idea that it's okay to be cool with NIN, perhaps a result of cycling out writers who were less interested in actually reviewing music than they were in pumping out "slacker English major" prose, perhaps seeing the effort Reznor puts into the community - his fellow musicians, and his fans - or maybe it's just okay to like NIN because they're independent now.
It was an unusual turn of events when rehearsal videos from The Slip debuted on Pitchfork.tv (which what MTVmusic.com might have been in some alternate, better universe) of all places. In today's post about the video of 1,000,000 at Sydney, there's, dare I say it, gushing! Phrases like "pretty awesome" and "Holy fuck" season up the words they wrapped around their repost of the HD video Rob Sheridan posted on Vimeo the other night.
Maybe it just means it's okay for Pitchfork readers to be cool with NIN. Whatever the reason for the slow about-face, it's good to see other people come to realize what we've been plugged into for a long time.