EVERYTHING I'M LISTENING TO AND EVERYTHING I'M LEARNING ABOUT #8
Change
Seeing everyone’s end of year Spotify Wrapped has made me realise, firstly, that everyone needs to leave Spotify and just buy records because Spotify is evil and, secondly, that everyone loves Big Thief.
Whilst streaming services have eroded how we value music you cannot confuse that with the actual quality of music having eroded. What I reckon is that music is just as good as it has always been and always will be.
At an open mic in the East Village full of old men with guitars I offered some diversity by being a young-ish man with a guitar. Someone kept talking to me about how music isn’t like what it used to be and there are no good bands anymore. I said that Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You by Big Thief came out in 2022. At the moment, I’d say this is one of the best album’s and if it had come out in 1964 then all the East Village Old Guitar Men would agree with me.
It is important for music to change and for your taste in music to change because there’s only so much time. Theres only so much time that you’re alive to experience music but, more importantly, only so much time that human beings will be around in general. Whenever whatever extinction event finally finished us all off then music will be left unfinished. If we’ve got one hundred, one thousand or one year left then there will be so much more potential music than realised music. If I was going to start a cult maybe it would be based on trying to create as much music as possible then when music was completed that would be our doomsday.
People are nostalgic and everyone’s taste balances between familiarity and novelty. Without outside input I think that people would just listen to the same music forever. To listen to something new you need someone to tell you: ‘you’ll like this give it a chance’ and even better you need a whole community of people telling you this.
#117 Change, the first track from Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You just uses cowboy chords and metaphors about rivers and wind. If someone who was just a very good songwriter tried to do that then they’d write a really rubbish song that sounded too obvious and dated. But Adrianne Lenker is the best so this song is arguably the best song.
#130 Born, Never Asked by Laurie Anderson starts with the numinous feeling invoking words:
‘It was a large room.
Full of people.
All kinds.
And they had all arrived at the same buidling at more or less the same time.
And they were all free.
And they were all asking themselves the same question:
What is behind that curtain?’
#123 House of the Rising Sun covered by Alt-J uses some newly written lyrics:
‘Like a bird flying over a forest fire, my father felt the heat beneath his wings’
Whenever I think about a desire for change then I think about the rush of air under a pigeons wings.
Couple of things
Also, I now have a website: nicholashann.com
My band London End Near have some announcements soon so you can follow us on instagram please: https://www.instagram.com/londonendnear/
And come to our gig supporting Poppy Prescott on 21st December at The Troubadour: https://www.ticketweb.uk/event/reasons-why-ep-launch-poppy-troubadour-tickets/13841238