I want to try an experiment that will also totally coincidentally help me do a better job of making a road trip CD for my girlfriend. There’s all kinds of engines out there that will take a song or two or three artists you like and spit out a list of songs or artists that either people who like what you like also like, or that have some kind of taxonomic classification in common.
What I want to see is whether that approach is more useful than just getting an impressionistic reaction from a few people who really like what you really like, because my experience has been that if I think she’s gonna like something, even if it doesn’t really make sense categorically, that’s a better predictor than something that does make sense categorically. So: I’m gonna give you a list of artists. I’ve already seen what the computers think. I’ll only list a few but then I’ll give feedback on known hits.
If a person really really likes these artists, then that person would also want to hear what (preferably) song or maybe artist?
Shakey Graves (and Esme Patterson)
St. Vincent
Nathaniel Rateliff
Sufjan Stevens
Do you or your girlfriend have Spotify accounts? 'Cause I’m gonna be dropping some links on you…
A Sufjan Stevens fan would probably like My Brightest Diamond (aka Shara Worden), who has collaborated with him a lot and sung on a few of his albums. Her albums are kind of all over the place in terms of their sound (some more avant garde than others) – here are Spotify links to her two most accessible albums (IMO): Bring Me the Workhorse and A Thousand Shark’s Teeth.
Neutral Milk Hotel (brainchild of genuine oddball genius, Jeff Mangum) put out two albums in the 1990s which sound like things Sufjan Stevens may have been inspired by, featuring odd instruments and elaborate fairy-tale-like lyrics. The best one is In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. [Note: his voice is an acquired taste]
Bat for Lashes is a little St. Vincent-esque – her album Fur And Gold is a good place to start.
Have you checked out other “new R&B” bands like Kings Go Forth, Eli Paperboy Reed, Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, Aloc Blacc? If you like Leon Bridges, you’d love these guys, too. Or Ray LaMontagne - try You are The Best Thing by him.
