Kids today don’t appreciate how good they’ve got it. Back in my day (groans), it would take hours to download a single song, so you would have to carefully weigh what you were interested in hearing so you could make the most of your download time. If you just discovered a new emo band, you would typically spend your precious time downloading other emo bands, only rarely straying beyond that.
Now, thanks to streaming platforms and high speed internet speeds, you can jump from Sunny Day Real Estate to My Bloody Valentine to Slayer to Body Count to 100 Gecs instantly. The floodgates are open.
One of the most interesting byproducts of this unfettered access to the whole of recorded music is the widespread cross-pollination of scenes and genres. I’ve been around long enough to see how shoegaze, metal, and hardcore have interbred to create heavier shoegaze (or gazier metal?).
I listen to a lot of that sort of stuff, so it takes a bit for me to be impressed anymore. And “impressed” is a weak word for my reaction to Blanket, whose second LP Modern Escapism recently grabbed me by the lapels and demanded my attention.
