Out Again/Music

I'm out of school again,

Every year I find it weird that very suddenly I will have absolutely nothing to do with myself for some period of time, longer over summer breaks than winter breaks. Luckily I've picked up working on this website, the fifth Stormlight Archive book is out (and last of the first arc... Trying not to think about that too hard), and I have a show to watch if I want whenever I'm done with the book. But, I still feel like I have nothing at all to do.

It does not help that this is the first time since age 12 that I'm not regularly working or even volunteering. My last non-volunteer job let me go (illegally, but I don't have the energy or care to actually do something about that). And I dont have absolutely nothing to do, I still have all of the transfer bullshit from my new university to fill out. I wouldn't necessarily consider that work though, not really. I've been filling my time coding this site, writing, and reading. Yapping to my friends and planning for my ttrpg sessions. I've also been filling the time with finding new music I haven't heard or thoroughlly explored before. Every Noise at Once was great, until the fact the site is no longer being updated due to its creator having been laid off from spotify meant that a lot of the reccomendations I was getting based on genre were becoming repetative. Also likely the reason spotify wrapped absolutely sucked this year. So, in the wake of the dead site I've been going back the old fashioned way and either:

• Going through my spotify likes and finding a song by an artist I haven't gone through the discography for yet and doing so
• Looking through the similar artists/similar listeners feature on Last.FM
• Doing much the same on bandcamp
• Or finally the worst option, just praying my spotify algorithm generated (refuse to call it AI, they've been using algorithms for decades now to reccomend new music to people, and shittily at that, I'm like 70% sure they just call it AI now because they want to suck more and make it 'sound cooler' even when its the same shit different day) reccomendations either via the DJ feature or their daily generated playlists give me something good/new.

Though, the problem with the last option usually falls to the fact that I'm a chronic spotify-generated playlist listener, meaning that the algorithm will arbitrarily decide which songs go on what playlist, then it recognizes that I'm listening to the couple of songs that they have randomly selected for me based on my likes, will then reccomend me those same songs over and over again, which then makes it appear that Oh Wow, My Goodness Phish Really Enjoys this selection of maybe a dozen songs so lets keep playing them. It is an ouroboros of music I do, legitimately like quite a bit, that gets overplayed to me, which then causes me to not like those songs as much. Self fulfilling prophecy somewhat. So, now my days are filled with going "Oh, I like this band let me find similar ones," where I then find similar ones and later find out upon reading the artist profiles that half of the artists in the band are actually the same musicians that just formed a spin off band from the original (ie. Pinback/Three Mile Pilot/Systems Officer/Rob Crow. No wonder I like all of their tunes. They're half the same band.)

Despite all this, my scrounging around has not been fruitless afterall. Here is a list of some albums/songs/artists I've either found recently or that I've listened to for awhile and know they don't have a lot of streams despite the quality of their work. In no particular order, of course.

• You Should Be Hated Here, Songs About Leaving- Carissa's Weird
  Not an underground band/album at all, I just hadn't listened to it before somehow. You Should Be Hated Here to me has a weirdly low amount of streams for an album where the most popular song has over 4million streams. The band has two lead singers, Mat Brooke and Jenn (formerly Ghetto) Champion, and together their voices just have an incredible effect, sort of similar to Jim Bogart, by The Front Bottoms, but more melancholy.
• All The Girls Up in Boston, Single- Campaigner
  This one only has about 2,000 streams on spotify which is crazy to me. Just from this song alone I would give their bassist deadass whatever they want. The bassline isn't even particularly complex, the instrumentation the song as a whole isn't super complex having that garage rock feel, but his tone is incredibly full and smooth. I'm quite fond of it, I'm also like 90% sure he's playing fretless, which is always a win in my book.
• Colour Revolt
  I like too many of their songs to pick just one, so I'll list a few here,
  • Moses of The South, Plunder Beg and Curse
  • Blood in Your Mouth, Colour Revolt
  • Mattress Underwater, Colour Revolt
  • New Family, Colour Revolt
  • Circus, Colour Revolt
  They're a really punk-rocky band from the early 2000's/2010's, with an truly exceptional lead guitarist. The good stuff.
• National Anthem of Nowhere, National Anthem of Nowhere, Apostle of Hustle
  One of those early 2000's bands that has really punchy, short and sweet, meaningful lyrics and great musicianship. Another song off the same album that's really good as well is Justine, Beckoning.
• OK Bear, Jeremy Enigk
  This album as a really dreamy/nostalgic feel. I specifically really enjoyed three songs, Mind Idea, Late of Camera, and Sant Feliu De Guixols
• Rob Crow
  Rob Crow has been apart of a lot of musical groups, I think the most popular of which having been Pinback (off the top of my head, anyway). His solo work as a result is unsurprisingly very good. Some of my favorites out of his solo work have been,
  • Over Your Heart, Living Well
  • Up, Living Well/Up
  • Forced Letter, Up
  • Scalped, He Thinks He's People
• Systems Officer
  Another Pinback spinoff!!! This time with Zach Smith (who is also in Three Mile Pilot as well, all members of Pinback just churn out music like breathing, I guess). As mentioned before. Let me again list you some songs I thoroughly enjoy:
  • My Keep, In Our Code
  • Joust, In Our Code
  • Forever This Cyanide, Systems Officer
  • Quan, Underslept
  • Shape Shifter, Underslept
  • We Breathe Dust, Underslept

Anyways, I think that. About closes it up here. I have more I could list, but I've spent quite some time compiling this and will likely make a similar list in the not so distant future. Enjoy!!!