Lou Barlow: Goodnight Unknown, part 4

Listening Envy

From: Brian
To: Monty & Scott

Monty, I felt a serious case of envy that you were able to go into this not having even heard Barlow's name before...but I was also kind of amazed at the idea of "listening blind" in this day & age. Aside from the incredible abundance of info on any given musical act (and the effortless ease of getting that info), there's also: between free tracks from an artist/label, the 30-second samples on most download sites, the full-album streaming provided by everyone from NPR to The Colbert Report, and all of the other digitally driven ways of hearing new music...well, it's been a long, long time since I've pressed "Play" and heard something for which I had little to no prep.

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man...I'm not sure all of this music previewing is entirely a good thing. Sure, it's saved me a bunch of money, in that I rarely will buy something based solely on the cover art or album title; but I also can't remember the last time that an album I came to love made its way to me accidentally. Do you guys find that you do more pre-purchase research now that you once did? Or maybe not more research, but more direct pre-purchase access before you're willing to invest 45 minutes in something unknown?

That's actually one of the things I'm really looking forward to with this MARClub concept: listening to things that you guys suggest, and having that be the only run-up to the album.

One other thing: after reading Monty's list of "sounds like" artists for Barlow, I was trying to think of how often I have the pleasure of listening to something new and feeling like it's really new. I think my 1st spin through Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest a few months back and maybe parts of Darcy James Argue's Secret Society recent debut both sounded unlike things and just like themselves. Can you think of any? Those moments are pretty thrilling, and pretty hard to come by.