[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by Antagon

I wonder if it'll ever get the recognition it deserves. Recommended it to someone the other day in a passionate, lengthy post. This one's been done dirty, certainly.

Most of the derision is linked to that retarded 0.0 Pitchfork "review". (If Pitchfork really wanted to be contrarian cool, they should have done a 180º and ended up naming it 2000's album of the year - Creem Lester Bangs style!) Anyway, Robert Christgau didn't buy that bullshit:

NYC Ghosts and Flowers
Maybe the trauma of guitar loss jolted them past songform, or maybe they're acting out with David Geffen gone bye-bye. Either way this impressionistic poetry-with-postrock is the most avant-sounding of their DGC-etc. product, and either way its avant parts are more listenable--nay, beautiful--than anything on Washing Machine if not A Thousand Leaves. Songform guy that I am, it put me off at first. But heard refracting the dusk on the Taconic Parkway or spattering through the rain on Second Avenue, its refusal to distinguish between abrasive and tender or man-made and natural is a compelling argument for their continuing to do whatever they damn well feel like. A

He even liked it better than Murray Street (!).