The Great Promo Listening Experiment

In an experiment to see if I can bore myself to death without actually dying if I can earn a living doing what music critics normally get paid to do if I can approach the world with curiosity and wonder, I've decided that every day this week I will download or stream or follow the link to one of the songs being pushed at me by promo email. I normally get about eight or ten of these emails a day, mostly for indie or world music; usually what I do with them is shunt them off into a "Music Contacts" folder with the intention of looking at some of them and possibly listening to the music on a day when I get around to it. But I never get around to it.

So the idea is that five days this week and five days next week I will listen to at least one of these promo tracks and briefly write up the results (but music I would listen to anyway, such as Donna Summer or Lady Tigra, won't be part of this experiment).

Today already being tomorrow, I think I know where this experiment will lead. But here we go.

( The experiment begins with Plushgun )

Promo Listening Experiment Day 2

Matt Bauer "Don't Let Me Out": Murder song that's lo-fi and quiet; so, understatement, or false understatement. Organ is on a half-accordion setting, gives the feeling of sound pushed through a strainer. First line: "I killed you and thought that was that/But right away your ghost comes back/And I can't get my hands around it/No, I can't get my hands around you." A haunted, restless murderer, his monologue being the impetus for expressionism: "The air was cool and the pines were long and draped down from the blackness." At the end, she takes a hammer and knocks the nails out of his coffin, but he doesn't want her to let him out.

The mood is set by gentle repetitive guitar picking; sounds nice for a moment or two but the cumulative result is mundane and mediocre. And the murder premise is a cliché, gives a sense of something dark and deep at work, but there's actually nothing much at work, even if it does produce some nice images and OK prettiness. Not worthless, but not a tick.