New Music Is Just (Background) Noise

And also some recent-ish stuff I liked

Going back basically forever¹, I always like to have music on in the background of whatever I’m doing. At home, this takes the form of having iTunes shuffle play music from my collection of digital music (either the four-and-five-star rated playlist or one that’s just the half-dozen or so albums I purchased most recently), while at work it’s generally streaming something via YouTube Music (mostly because I’m both lazy and slightly cheap and thus don’t want to set up Yet Another Account and pay a monthly fee for music I won’t own).

A look at my home page on YT Music

If I really need to buckle down and do something, I’ll stream reliable favorite bands (which is why you see The Hold Steady in that screenshot), and if there’s a new release I like I'll go for a particular album. But this is also one of the primary ways I maintain tenuous contact with Pop Culture These Days, so I regularly throw myself on the mercy of The Algorithms and shuffle-play the New Release Mix that they automatically generate.

This gets a bit whiplash-y, since it’s populated to some degree by things I’ve chosen to listen to or thumbs-up in the past. Which means I get these wild swings between hard-core hip-hop and down-the-line country music, mixed in with noisy alternative rock. Which can be a little disorienting at times, when it switches from some angry dude yelling about kicking the asses of people who don’t acknowledge his personal awesomeness to some Appalachian woman warbling about small towns and Jesus.

A continual source of mild annoyance, though, is the heavy presence of what I refer to as “OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ” music: thumpingly repetitive dance beats with farty synths and if there are lyrics at all they’re probably lifted from an 80’s song. I half suspect that this is because there’s just an infinite supply of this stuff (it can’t require a lot of effort to bang these tracks out…) so even if the algorithm weeds out 99.9% of it, it’s still a substantial fraction of what gets through². On the off chance that it’s under the mistaken impression that I like this shit, though, I’ve been making an active effort to thumbs-down these tracks when I notice them.

That last clause is doing a ton of work, though, because through this process I’ve come to realize that one of the distinguishing features of this stuff, ironically, is its near-perfect forgettability. It’s so generic that it easily slips completely into the background, just white noise with a techno beat. When I notice it, I kind of hate it, but it’s surprisingly hard to notice it. Which I suspect is undermining my efforts to train the algorithm, because I end up letting a lot of these songs play because they just never register.

The irony here is that means this stuff is technically kind of perfect for what I’m actually using the streaming music for— it’s patterned noise to keep me from being distracted by conversations in the outer office, not something I want to be paying close attention to. But at the same time, when it snaps into auditory focus, it actively irritates me, which is suboptimal. I don’t really know what to do about it other than bitch about it on social media, though…³

Anyway, so this isn’t just “Get Offa My Lawn” stuff, here’s some recent-ish music I’ve actually liked:

Craig Finn, Always Been:

Probably the least surprising thing in the world that I really like the new record from the front man of my favorite band. This may very well be his best solo record, leaning heavily on his flair for describing small moments that are both weirdly specific and highly relatable.

Counting Crows, “Spaceman in Tulsa”:

These guys go years between releases, and they can be wildly uneven, but they also put out the occasional real banger; admittedly, in a slightly corny mode, but I’m a suburban dad in my mid-50s, so who am I kidding? This started popping up on shuffle play a while back, and I probably need to look into whether the associated album is worth buying. And maybe adding them to the dad-rock playlists I have on a thumb drive in the car, because any time they turn up on my iTunes shuffling, it makes me smile.

(Prior to pulling up that video, I was not aware that Adam Duritz had ditched the pseudo-dreads in favor of looking like Ricky Jay… That’s certainly a decision.)

Zach Bryan, “Oak Island”:

I had listened to this album when it first came out and thought it was all right but not brilliant, but went back to it after a story in the local paper about this video being shot in Schenectady⁴, and the good songs are very good indeed. Which is why I keep getting Appalachian women warbling about Jesus in my new music feed, but we’re working on that.

Fust, Big Ugly:

I think I’ve posted this video before, but this is very much a Steven Hyden Patio Rock album, and if you know what that means, you’ll get it.

Bartees Strange, Horror:

This is as close as I’ll get to a play for indie cred here. This is a really solid record that exists in kind of its own genre.

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So, yeah, there’s your Old Man Yells At Cloud content for the week, with bonus Old Man Sings Along With Other Old Men content. If you like any of this, here’s a button:

And if you feel so moved, the comments will be open:

1. I sort of think this started in elementary school when we moved to the house my parents still live in, which is very close to a highway. I started playing records at bedtime to keep from being bothered by passing cars, and have just gotten accustomed to having music on all the time as a result. Somewhat to Kate’s chagrin, because she’s a light sleeper.

2. This is supported, I think, by the fact that the “Discover Mix” (which goes back further) has less OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ in it. I also think there’s a day-of-the-week effect, with Fridays being better for actual music because that’s when major label albums drop, while mid-week is just awful for low-effort techno sludge.

3. On the bright side, this makes me a bit less concerned about some of the more dystopian claims people make about our AI future, because if The Algorithms are this bad given the wealth of information they have about my music tastes, they’re really not that close to fully displacing humans.

4. One scene is outside the biker bar that’s across the street from our regular Friday happy hour spot.