I do not think that conjunction means what you think it means

rather than the less intrusive (but arguably more subtle)

Yes.  Because normally subtletly is very intrusive.  I guess a case can be made.

Comments

[rone]

pitchforkmedia does for indie music what Wired did for the Internet.

[text]

both intrusive and subtle modify the musical method the author is talking about in the sentence, i.e.: less A, but arguably more B. A and B do not have to have any special relationship for the sentence to work. Like so:

Cats are less pointy but arguably hairer than pencils. It doesn't have to be the case that all pointy things aren't hairy for the sentence to work.

[ben wolfson]

I'm not sure that's really what's operative here. Your case would be stronger were "intrusive" and "subtle" not already related, and were "but arguably more subtle" not a parenthesis after "less intrusive".

[dave zacuto]

Wait, so are you taking issue with the "but" or the "rather"?

[ben wolfson]

But.

[Matt Weiner]

Well, you could say something like "This presentation of the argument is briefer but arguably less in-depth than that one." The implicit contrast is something like: brevity is good, but so is depth.

If the writer is saying that intrusiveness is good, and so is subtlety, then the 'but' makes sense in that way. Since I don't normally think of intrusiveness as good, it does sound a bit funny to me.