So there I am, making a playlist circling around a country-but-not-quite-country vibe I was feeling, and I’m poking around in various recommendation engines for “if you like then you might like” kind of stuff and there’s Katie Pruitt. I might like Katie Pruitt, the komputormachina said, so I put her album on my playlist all casually, like, “oh, here’s another album”. What a buffoon, what an absolute simpleton I was. 185 tracks on this playlist from amazing artists, The Staves and Lera Lynn and Waxahatchee and Joy Williams and Sarah Shook (coming soon, oh lawdy) but here comes Katie Pruitt and…were there other songs on this playlist? I wouldn’t know. I can’t say for sure how many times I played Expectations the album top to bottom, I’m not sure our common earthly numerals count that high. Katie Pruitt is exactly the kind of addiction I listen to music for. I love her voice, I love her musical sensibility, and by god this album has an Explicit tag cause Katie Pruitt ain’t afraid to crack one out and if history has taught us anything here at this website, dropping an f-bomb on me is a real bonus.
This was a total accident. Maybe fate, if you believe in that sort of thing.
I got a notification from PledgeMusic that Elizabeth & The Catapult had posted an update on the new album project and I popped over there on my phone and it gave me one of those “you might also like” situations and I’m not even kidding you, I hit the wrong spot on the phone and there I was looking at Lera Lynn’s PledgeMusic. She’s just put out her own new album, RESISTOR and I mean, once I’m there, may as well listen right?
In a Quixotian tilting exercise, I endeavoured to take on use of a Windows Phone 8 device for a while. It was actually pretty good, but synchronizing music from a Mac to it was not, so I decided to take that opportunity to investigate a paid account with Spotify. I have to say I’ve been quite impressed with the catalog breadth and due to the excellent coverage, the rate at which I could take on new random music was increased immensely, not to mention they now send me these emails that say things like “You like (artist), you should listen to (new artist)” and these imperatives are eerily accurate (data mining is getting really effective). I tell you this such that you might have some context for where I found them and also as a sort of continuing thread that runs through many of my posts talking about my various music inputs. I now have a very lengthy offline playlist in my clients (I call it “The Fitting Room”. I’m really quite proud of myself for that one.) full of music to suss out. I suppose there is some method through which this playlist might be “followed”, as the kids say. I may consider making it public. I’m not sure you people want to see the sausage being made.
You may know Jenny Lewis as part of indie darlings Rilo Kiley. I’m not gonna lie to you here, folks: I don’t love Rilo Kiley. I tried on Rilo in aught and four when they appreared on the Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack with Portions For Foxes and it just didn’t catch my ear. I’ve heard a song or two since, but nothing to make me take a deeper listen. You win some, you lose some. Jenny Lewis’ solo work, on the other hand, is a nuclear-payload awesome bomb. I’m talking mushroom cloud of quality, friends.
GASP (Shock!) /awe. Yes, friends. “And other music. Like, also.”
The year, lovers, is 1996 and I am positively enamored with Bringing Down the Horse by The Wallflowers. One Headlight, 6th Avenue Heartache, Three Marlenas, The Difference, Josephine… What an album. Then they played a song for the worst Godzilla movie ever made, and we’re talking about a series of movies that relied on men in rubber monster suits trampling scale models of cities, for the most part. I don’t know why they did that. Right around then, I checked out. I know there were more albums, I remember hearing Letters from the Wasteland once and just not caring at all. Why? I honestly don’t know, I liked the Wallflowers.