on
independent record labels, signifying the artistic freedom and cachet that came from operating
on the fringes.
By 2000, Schreiber had moved the site to Chicago, acquired some freelance writers and
codified the Pitchfork review into a signature formula ?a a long, rambling personal opinion of an album, accompanied by a rating on a scale from 0.0 to 10.0. But the site?ˉs readership was
still, to use his word, ?°negligible.?± That changed in October of that year, when Pitchfork
posted a fawning, grandiloquent 10.0 review of Radiohead?ˉs experimental rock album Kid A. Critic Brent DiCrescenzo?ˉs paean included lines like ?°butterscotch lamps along the walls of the tight city square bled upward into the cobalt sky?± and became an Internet sensation ?a for
all the wrong reasons.
Then an odd thing happened: people made fun of the prose, but they kept reading Pitchfork. Schreiber and his writers knew what they were talking about; Kid A., which later
debuted at No. 1 on Billboard, really was a 10.0 album. Pitchfork?ˉs reviews of artists previously considered unknown or underground, began to act as stepping-stones to mainstream coverage. In the year of 2000, Modest Mouse moved from independent label Up
Records to Sony-owned Epic; by 2005, they had performed on Saturday Night Live, been nominated for two Grammys. Their songs are now used in car commercials.