The Past Is A River

And so we come to the music post that lost the coin-flip a week ago: new stuff. Well, new to me. Some of it may not feel all that "new", either artistically or chronologically. Then again, when does it ever?

In terms of time, I've noticed a curious trend in the YouTube algorithm of late. As has been noted by many, many commenters in the threads I've read, YT has started recommending videos with low viewing numbers from its earliest days. Things that have been sitting there all this time, seen by hardly anyone. Songs and performances that first appeared on the platform seventeen years ago, just after it became available to the public, but which have barely managed to scrape a couple of thousand views since then. 

Obscure oldies have been popping up as recommends for months and people seem to love it. In fact, contrary to how it was a few years ago, when the algorithm was widely held in contempt, these days I see nothing but praise for the way it's introducing new viewers and listeners to things they never knew existed. Thread after thread, packed with comments from people either thanking the algorithm for sending them there or blessing their luck, as fits their worldview.

I've certainly discovered a few things from 2005-7 that I had no idea were there but which I'm very glad to have been shown. I might collect some of  those up for a post of their own some time but today I'm going to focus on another highly positive aspect of the algorithm - the way it consistently introduces me to bands and solo artists I hope to go on listening to for years.

I think that's also changed. I've been using YouTube as a discovery mechanism for music for at least a decade now and my memory of much of that time is that the process used to be quite hit-and-miss. I had to flip through a lot of suggestions that didn't interest me to find something that did. 

I won't say I had to sift a lot of dross to find gold because the older I get, the more I come around to the idea that most things have  some gold in them, somewhere - it just isn't always valuable to me. It remember searching for it being heavy going at times, though.

Of late, by which I probably mean in the last twelve months or maybe a little less, the hit rate does seem to have improved. A lot. That's partly why I have such a ridiculous backlog of music I want to share. I'm finding more to my taste in general and specifically, more people who consistently produce work I like. 

That could be down to improvements in the algorithm. It could also be that what I choose to watch on YouTube has become more coherent, providing the algorithm with a better purchase on my tastes and preferences. 

Not that I make it easy for them. I never "Like" anything on the platform or indeed on any social media so that ready checklist doesn't exist. Even without my marking up my favorites, though, I imagine the algorithm has access to my full viewing history, including how many times I've watched a video and whether I watched it all the way through or gave up after a few seconds. 

Is it sophisticated enough to extrapolate my likes and dislikes from that? Who knows? It's certainly the case that the musical suggestions it offers are orders of magnitude more likely to be relevant than the political or topical videos it thinks I might want to see. I virtually never watch anything like that so I imagine it finds it quite hard to get a handle on what might appeal.

It could also be that my focus has narrowed. When YouTube was new and exciting, I used to dot about all over the place, actively seeking out music from around the world, present and past. These days I'm more concerned with drilling down into whatever interests me at the moment, looking for more and better examples of trends I'm following or aiming to expand my understanding of certain genres or styles.

There's also the possibility that increasing use of curated music sites like Pitchfork, Stereogum and NME, along with a few music blogs, has shaped my entry-point into YouTube in such a way as to influence results there. I do tend to use those sites for musical triage, only clicking through to watch videos on YouTube whose descriptions make them seem like things I'd be likely to enjoy or at least find interesting.

Whatever's happening, it's leading me to discover a surprising number of acts and artists I feel I might be listening to for a while, not just in the moment. That's not always been the case, something that becomes uncomfortably apparent as I look back at music posts here only to find I can't even remember some of the songs or acts, let alone what they sound like.

Whether this signifies a permanent shift in the way I listen to and learn about music is impossible to predict. A few months from now I might be doing things completely differently. Or the algorithm might go back to suggesting nothing much I want to hear, like it was doing a few years ago. 

For now, though, here's a post featuring only acts the algorithm has flagged up for me this year, all of which I've found interesting enough to listen to multiple times and whose back catalog I've been happy to explore. I might even go so far as to buy records by some of them. 

Always assuming they make any, that is...

 Stained Glass Window - Sunday (1994)

Absolutely no apologies for opening with Sunday (1994) again. They are, by some distance, the most exciting discovery for me since Blondshell. If we're talking repeat plays, by the way, Blondshell's debut album has no peer. If it was vinyl I'd have worn a hole in it by now.

That said, I'm starting to see a worrying trend in my listening. One in which I am very definitely, as will become apparent later, by no means alone.

I've been assiduous in excising every hint of the all-too-prevalent belief that all the best music just happens to have been made precisely when you yourself were in your teens and early twenties. In side-stepping that trap, however, it appears I may have fallen into another, whereby my brain receives anything that sounds as if it was recorded between 1990-95 as some kind of divine message from the infinite eternal. 

I may need to watch that. Then again, why fight it? The nineties were great, weren't they?

Stained Glass Love - Telenova

This wasn't the Telenova track I was going to use but who could resist the synchronicity? Not me, obviously . It makes a really a good example of the point of this post, though. These are bands and artists from whose repertoire I could pick almost anything at random and expect to get something worth sharing. 

There are lots and lots of examples on this blog of great one-offs by people who never really did anything much else of note. And that's all part of the popular music myth. You only need that one, killer tune and you're made. 

Oddly, I find albums filled with killer tune after killer tune quite difficult to listen to more than a handful of times A band with a sound I love, those I can play forever.

Sometimes it's all about the vibe. Mostly, really.

Money Mullet - The Pill

Case in point! I really can't imagine listening to a whole album by The Pill over and over again. I haven't even played Wet Leg's debut that much, even though I loved every track on it when they all came out separately beforehand. Some bands are just meant to be singles bands. It's a shame singles aren't the driving force they once were. A true singles band is a joy forever. Just so long as you don't try to listen to the albums.

The Actress - Goldie Boutlier

Goldie Boutlier, on the other hand, I could listen to all day. It'd be a rich diet but I can handle it. I've had an appetite for this sort of thing for a while now and I'm very far from sated. As we're about to find out.

Every act so far has featured on the blog already, which is why I'm restraining myself to just the one more by each of them today. We're past that now. Here comes Tiger. I've been listening to a lot of Tiger...

 Living In The 90s - Tiger del Flor

I very much am not the only one to be having nineties' daydreams just now, and here's the headline evidence. I guess it's at least time. Past time, really.

It's hard to remember just how long ago the nineties were. Thirty years to the middle of the decade. What I do, when this sort of thing comes up, which it so often does, is think of myself at fifteen, then project as far back from there as the nostalgic target is from now and see where it lands me. 

I was fifteen in the early-mid '70s so thirty years back would be the fricken' Second World War! It  was literally history as in it's what I was studying for my O- and A-Levels! I sure as hell wasn't wishing I was living there! Or listening to the big band sounds of Glen Miller and his Orchestra!

Geez. No wonder Gen-Z feel nostalgic for the noughties and even the twenty-tens now. Anything further back must seem like the dark ages... 

Time moves so damn fast...

Heaven Is A Harley - Tiger del Flor

Time, they say, is a river but it's also a continuum. Tiger was just telling us how she wished she was living in the nineties but now here she is referencing... what? The fifties? The sixties? All those neon motel signs. And the bikes. They look kind of  '80s although I know nothing about motorbikes.

That's it, though, isn't it? All time is the same time, once it's gone.

James Dean - Tiger del Flor

There's "influenced by" and then there's this. Still, I guess Lana's moved on now, so there's a slot open. Sooner Tiger than a few others who've been eyeing it. 

There's more where those three came from but I'll save them for another time. Count on it.

Scorsese - Viola Odette Harlow

I'm always at least sort of working on a post where all the titles are the names of real people but I keep using the best ones so I never get to finish it. One day.

I just love the distortion on this, by the way. More singers should fuzzy up their vocals. And use megaphones.

Child Actor - Glüme

I haven't switched tracks here. Glüme is Viola Odette Harlow. Also, she was indeed a child actor so we can probably take this as biographical. 

If you google her, the top links come from (Or go to, depending how you see it.) IMDB, where it will tell you "She played Shirley Temple on Broadway and has continue to tap dance all her life. Her dream is to bring back the great American musical." 

Not with tunes like these, she won't. Or we can hope not, anyway. That would just be weird.

 Arthur Miller - Glüme

And she's at it again with the name-checks. She doesn't rate Arthur Miller much, does she? I've had his autobiography, Timebends, for at least forty years but I've never read it. Don't suppose I ever will.

If we're going to talk about the long shadow of the past, let's just think about the fifties for a moment. I spent most of my adolescence surrounded by the trappings of that forlorn but never forgotten decade. It was all over the pop charts and the cinema screens, then. You couldn't get away from it and most of us didn't want to or not entirely. We just wanted to be choosy about which parts we cherry-picked.. 

I went hitch-hiking through France in, what was it? 1977 or '78 and I spent half the trip with rolled-up black and white posters sticking out of my backpack. I bought them in some French store because you couldn't get such cool posters back at home just then or not where I lived anyway. And who was on those posters? James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, of course.

Even then they were both the best part of two decades dead. Now, here we are, both of them in the grave for sixty years and teens and twenties still idolize and fantasize about them just like I did. And love or loathe the people who knew them. 

We live in a palimpsest and the text gets harder to read year by year. I blame Lana. If anyone's made the tragic-heroic past cool again it's her. It's always her. 

 Pretty Youth - Punchbag

Finally, just to break the rules I set for this post, here's a band I've only heard two tunes by. Then again, as far as I can tell, two is all they have! And neither seems to have anything to do with Old Hollywood or the glamor of the past. Then again, it's early days for Punchbag yet...

Here's the other. You'll have to watch it on YouTube, I'm afraid. Some moral guardian seems to have reported it to the authorities. How very 1950s of them.

Fuck It - Punchbag

There's live footage of the band doing a half-hour set so they must have a few more songs, although not that many more, I'd guess. With this kind of energy, they're either going to blow up or implode so enjoy it while it lasts or until you've had more than you can stand.

From here on in I think I'm going to have to blank the record and forget about catching up. It's never going to happen. Next time, I'll start afresh. Doesn't look like there's much chance I'll run short.