discover new music

I bought another CD in the last month: Ok Go!’s Oh No!. It’s great, pretty straightforward pop-rock but with catchy tunes and a lot of infectious enthusiasm. Good lyrics too.

I’m using Pandora a lot and have made a really long list of bands and artists I want to find out more about. Among them are Aqualung, Jason Mraz and the Violent Femmes. Yeah, my taste ranges from beautiful melodic ballads to punk!

My brother got me Rufus Wainwright’s Want 1 & 2 for Christmas and I am loving both discs so much. He’s incredibly diverse with these lovely meandering melodies, but also anthemic pop, and songs that sound like show tunes. They’re the kind of albums that just get better and better the more times you hear them.

Thanks to a tip from snoozymoo I’ve been able to start using Pandora and am worried that I’m going to get addicted to it! It’s so much fun! Based on what I’ve heard there I’ve decided I need to investigate more Ok Go!, Frank Black and Heatmiser. Heatmiser is the band Elliott Smith was in before he went solo so it was great to discover them. I love Elliott and didn’t know about Heatmiser before. Yay!

I seem to have become that cliched person who starts losing touch with new music as they approach 30 (as opposed to the other cliche: the person who remains hyperventilatingly obsessed with music throughout their entire adult life, leading others to form the opinion that they are still stuck in their teen years. It’s kind of sad in a way but also sweet and, ultimately, quite commendable). I need to redress the balance.

I’m going to start using the internet to find out about new bands, visit sites of music magazines and check out Pandora and last.fm (although Pandora, I believe, isn’t available outside the US). I’ll start listening to Xfm and the alternative Tel Aviv radio station online. And then I’ll buy some CDs!