Am I the only one not finding much good new music the last year or so?

https://pitchfork.com/news/new-album-releases/

 

The month of May is looking promising for new releases:

• Kendrick Lamar
• Wilco
• The Smile
• Arcade Fire
• Sharon Van Etten
• Black Star
• Flume
• Porridge Radio
• Belle & Sebastian
• Sunflower Bean
• Black Keys

 

I don’t pay as much attention as I used to when I had more free time and most of the blogs I followed have gone the same way but some of the more mainstream (but good) ones are still around:

Brooklyn Vegan
Gorilla vs Bear
The Line of Best Fit
DIY Mag

No links as I’m on mobile, sorry. One thing you should think about is picking up Feedly and adding blogs you like so you can more quickly see what’s going on since last you looked. That’ll let you expand the number of sites you follow as you won’t waste as much time wading through stuff you’re not interested in.

 

Qobuz auto-play feature has been deviously spot on for me, as well as its 'My Weekly Q', only a small minority of it is new music per se however, lots of stuff from previous decades I was not aware of, some albums by artists I spotted years back and then lost track of somehow... but yeah, it's been 7 or even 8 out of 10 tracks offered. in fact, thanks to it, I finally dislodged myself from my old ways. I was going through something like OP in way, not finding good news stuff, so got stuck to what I knew for a while. glad I switched to Qobuz.

 

f**k me! The last time I loved an album enough to buy it; the movie was just called ‘Raiders’ - they hadn’t actually lost the ark yet!
Seriously, I have about 10,000 redbook CD’s; about 9000 are classical (remember when you could buy box sets like complete Vladimir Horowitz for 100 bucks on Amazon?) and the rest are 70’s / 80’s - Beatles, Bowie, Floyd, Stones etc. I like old school rap like Eminem, NWA, Public Enemy but I really do think modern music is pretty shit. I play the good stuff for my 15 year old niece; I tell her ‘Taylor Swift? - here: Fleetwood Mac - Rumours’. ‘Ed Shearman? - here: Dire Straits. No comparison IMHO. I’m probably just a cranky, ignorant, old curmudgeon.

 

You have little knowledge of modern music, but somehow know it's shit, then you lazily group together some of the greatest artists from the past and compare them to a couple of mediocre mainstream artists to make your point. It's no wonder your view is so negative. Plus there were plenty of old guys in the 70s and 80s bitching about how all new music was shit.

 

I have plenty of knowledge of modern music - I have been an entertainer for 40 years, was nominated for the equivalent of your Emmy and hosted a music video show when I was younger with more hair - and think most of it these days is shit. You calling Taylor Swift and Ed Shearman mediocre would not be agreed with by most people that listen to them - my point. Your last point has no relevance at all.

 

I apologize for accusing you for lacking knowledge. I don't think Taylor Swift is mediocre, but if you are bringing up names like David Bowie and Pink Floyd, at least name better new songwriters, more innovative and boundary pushing artists that would be more comparable. I definitely know Ed Sheeran isn't one of them.

 

I agree with Brubaker that it's an unfair comparison. Don't think many "music heads" listen to Ed Sheeren or Taylor Swift. (Although I also agree Taylor isn't mediocre. She's pretty great at the music that she makes, even if it's not my cup of tea.)

One thing about modern music is that there's just SO MUCH to wade through. With how accessible it is to create and distribute music, we are also inundated with 100x more bands to sift through to find things that we like. Whereas we used to get music curated to us by music A&R's back in the 70's / 80's, now we're having to rely on blogs, podcasts and discovery algorithms. I remember looking through music release dates before going to the music store in the 90s and there'd be a couple dozen albums coming out on any given Tuesday. Now there are hundreds of albums out on any given Friday.

 

Well I got Feedly and got excited and bought a year subscription and now I just have a bunch of music news in my feeds which I could care less about. I was hoping for music recommendations. Maybe they’ll give me a refund.

Or maybe I’m not using it right? I added all the blogs you mentioned but it’s music news/gossip not recommendations.

 

They’re music blogs, it’s up to you to read them to find music. Feedly lists the articles from sites you follow in one place and in a condensed format which lets you sift through them for music you might like more efficiently. This lets you cast your net wider and pay attention to more sources without spending more time. It’s just a fancy rss reader though, I never tried it with a subscription so don’t know anything about that. Google did the embrace and strangle trick on rss a while back and it never really recovered so it’s a bit of arcane knowledge but it’s perfect for keeping up on music blogs.

 

Boy howdy, how have I never run across The Joy Formidable before? Outstanding!

Throwing Muses' latest (Sun Racket) is excellent, as is, believe it or not, Halsey's (don't think of it as Halsey, but rather as Nine Inch Nails with Halsey singing).

 

I have my own tastes and artists/producers I keep an eye on.

Here is a small list of artists I regularly check regarding releases and collaborations:

• Bonobo
• Mitch Murder
• Jamie XX
• Ghost
• Queens of the Stone Age
• Marina (Marina & The Diamonds)
• Florence + The Machine
• Animals As Leaders
• Lady Gaga (Yes, I am slow but she is great.)
• Rina Sawayama (She is great.)
• Gojira
• Earthless
• Missy Elliot (When you grew up in the 90-ties you know why.)

 

I still find good new music. Sometimes really good. The scene is just not what it used to be. In the 2010's there were breakthrough albums that defied genre coming out alt the time. these days it's a lot of the same crap with some gems mixed in, but nothing as revelatory as Arcade Fire's first album, or The National's albums, or Fleet Foxes' first albums, or Bon Iver's first album, etc.

It seems the music scene goes in waves of creativity and exploration and we're just not in a super creative period right now. But there are great albums being released. Just not "holy f'ing shit this album changed my life" kine of thing like it was...

 

I've felt the same but about the late 90's-00's. I can't decide if the quality of music or the degree of innovation and experimentation has declined, or if I've gotten older and things that seem groundbreaking and interesting to me have changed. I've definitely noticed that it has become more difficult for me to connect emotionally with new music the more I age. Personally I've never really cared for Arcade Fire or The National, and didn't come to appreciate Fleet Foxes or Bon Iver until younger people convinced me to listen more to them.

There are still new artists that I come to enjoy, but it takes more work. The instant connection I was able to make in my 20's and early 30's has fallen away in my mid 30's-40's. Shifting my attention towards genres that were on the fringe of my interest earlier in life has helped a bit, it's given me a larger catalog to comb through and a historical journey to appreciate, but the magic of hearing artists like Will Oldham or Bill Callahan for the first time has been a much less frequent experience. Sure, I think many things about society and culture are getting worse, and my small group of ageing friends agree, but hasn't that been the rallying cry of ageing people everywhere for centuries? I don't think we're wrong that stuff is less good, but I do think it's very difficult to consider from an objective position.

 

although I picked up The National in my 20s, I always considered them... I don't know... mature sort of music? ) you can't compare them to Arcade Fire in that in my opinion.

 

Yep - we're all just showing our ages:

https://skynetandebert.com/2015/04/...hen-do-we-stop-keeping-up-with-popular-music/

My own cutoff: early 90s, Which fits.

 

That theory doesn’t fit me, I spend much more time searching for new music than I did in the 2010’s because it’s much more difficult to find stuff I really like. in the 2010’s Metacritic was a reliable source of good music, now it’s pop garbage. I also could easily find new music on things like Amazons “people who bought this also bought”. I do the same with their streaming service but it’s not nearly as successful as it used to be. There was just more interesting, creative music IME

There’s still good music though it just takes 6x as much work and there’s less of it out there.

 

Presuming your reply is to my post: that was the main point of the article, I think; your taste has "matured".

 

I don’t know. The music world is FULL of stuff like this these days.

https://abbygogo.bandcamp.com/album/abby-gogo

This is just so f'ing boring. It’s just Indie jingles. I wouldn’t have liked this 10 years ago either. It’s like they’re just playing chords all in the same key but not actually writing songs.