aryanhwy | my new favorite music

I used to be very conservative in my music tastes -- not for any principled reason, but mostly because what I listened to when I was young was what my parents listened to in college, and I was more than satisfied with that, and developed a more than ample music collection stemming from those preferences. Then I moved off to college, where normally one expects to expand their music horizons, and I did, but only in a small way -- Dan Keidl introduced me to Granian and Erasure,

leleth_faery to the Crüxshadows and other darkwave/newwave music, Phil to Caroline's Spine, and then I met Joel and learned about groups like Radiohead, Firewater, Neutral Milk Hotel. I stumbled upon Placebo all by myself -- I don't even remember how. Of course when we got married, all of Joel's music became accessible to me, but I never delved much in to it. The only new musical discoveries we made in the first 5 years we were together were Franz Ferdinand, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, and the Postal Service. Then about a year ago I followed a link to a Shearwater concert from

gflower's blog, and was hooked immediately. (Which reminds me, I really need to get tickets for their next Amsterdam show, on the 17th). I started following NPR's "Song of the Day", and became better friends with Joel's friend Martijn who is a big music buff, and now a year later I'm relatively conversant in current indie music, have been to more shows in the last 6 months than I'd been in the previous 10 years, and am often swapping recommendations with Martijn, my mom, and my mom's college friend Keith who was responsible for most of the music I listened to growing up. I've developed a long play list from NPR's SotD, but only once did I discover something that immediately set me off to find more, and, when I found more, made me fall in love: Fun. It's probably impossible for Strawbs to ever be displaced from the prize place of "my favorite band", so there's no comparison to that really, but since September or so, Fun has definitely been firmly ensconced in the #2 slot. I've listed to "Aim & Ignite" 3-5 times a week every week since I discovered them. Love that music.

Martijn has a music blog where he posts his "Top 23" every 10 days or so. Monday night when we were at his place for supper and Dutch lessons, he had his current top 23 on shuffle and there was one song that made me pause and ask who it was: Julian Plenti, "Games for Days". Since then, I've been shuffling through the various songs available on youtube, and, yup, I've found new favorite music (though "favorite" here should be taken in a transient sense: They've certainly not ousted either Strawbs or Fun from their places, and probably Shearwater can be comfortable in #3 for the time being). It's "favorite" in my new "want to listen to every day" music, and also "favorite" in "I want to actually have the album" sort of way. So when I went to Matador today to pre-order Shearwater's new record (I think with paying for it in dollars and getting the 15% discount, even with shipping it will end up being cheaper than buying it at the show in two weeks), I also put in the Julian Plenti album. Whoo! Looking forward to both of those arriving.

I have to admit, though, having never really been a contemporary-music person, it's a little weird being more indie-music-literate than Joel is!