It’s the time of year for saving money!
Over the weekend, a friend of mine brought up an initially perplexing point: he asked me why I “only” review older artists and reissues? I told him that wasn’t true. A discussion ensued and I realized that due to social media, he probably never really saw many of my reviews of somewhat “newer” artists. His perception had been shaped by the whims of his social media news feed.
You see, after our articles are published here on Audiophilereview we share links to them around on social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest. After that, it is up to the luck of the draw (and the whims of various and sundry algorithms — more on that in a moment) as to whether any one actually “sees” our pieces in their feed. Some people see them. Many do not. Sadly, for numerous reasons the latter is case more times than not.
As to why this happens… well… my non-scientific theory has to do with levels of “engagement” of certain sub-communities of readers out there on the world wide web. For example, given this is Audiophilereview, there are a certain percentage of readers who are specifically looking for information on great sounding recordings which will show off their high fidelity music systems. Given that many of these systems are quite pricey and require a fair amount of room to set up, many of these readers probably tend to be a bit older and established. And I would suspect that they tend to be interested mostly in reviews about artist they know about: older artists. So these older readers tend to re-share articles about their older favorite artist more regularly.
Going back to the algorithms, the more articles get re-shared around on the Interwebs, the greater the likelihood others will see it because said algorithm will consider it “popular” and thus worthy of spreading the love around to more readers.
This is of course is one of the big problems with social media algorithms and services which rely on this sort of popularity voting mechanism. In some ways it can put the artifice in artificial intelligence.
Going back to some of the fans of many older artists, many of those fan groups (on Facebook especially) are quite engaged and interested in their favorite stars. So for example, click on these highlighted links (in parentheses) to my reviews about groups like Yes (Close To The Edge) and King Crimson (Radical Action To Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind) and The Beatles (Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band) and you will see that these reviews have tended to get a lot of traction out there on the Internet. Each have been shared and re-shared hundreds and sometimes thousands of times (which you can see by the tracker device at the top of each article).
Does that make those other artists who were not shared as much — and thus not as many people may have even seen the reviews in the first place — any less good? Heck no! There are some fantastic newer, perhaps less famous bands out there or simply well established bands you haven’t heard about because you are outside their target demographic. You just have to pay attention and look for them a bit more.
So, in the interest of trying to dispel some of this perception that I am only reviewing “old” music, here is a list of some reviews from the past five or so years featuring performers you may have overlooked and probably should check out (click on the hyper-link within each title to jump to the review). Where applicable, I have added below each entry links to their appearances on the Tidal streaming service (some in the MQA “master quality” format if you have the correct decoding technology at your disposal).
Here is the list:
Fleet Foxes: Crack Up and Helplessness Blues
Also streaming in Master Quality Audio on Tidal. Link here and here.
Ra Ra Riot: Beta Love and Need Your Light (Vinyl, Download)
Also streaming on Tidal. Link here and here.
Grizzly Bear: Veckatimist, Shields, Painted Ruins (Tidal)
Also streaming on Tidal. Link here and here..
Pugwash: Silverlake (Vinyl, Download)
Also streaming on Tidal. Link here
Guided By Voices: Live on Austin City Limits, ESP Ohio, August By Cake & How Do You Spell Heaven (Vinyl, Download)
Also streaming on Tidal. Link here and here and here
Flaming Lips: Oczy Mlody and Onboard the International Space Station Concert for Peace (Vinyl, Download)
Also streaming on Tidal. Link here and here
Charles Bradley: Changes, No Time For Dreaming (Vinyl, Download)
Also streaming on Tidal. Link here and here
Mike Watt: Ring Spiel Tour ’95 (Vinyl, Download)
Also streaming on Tidal. Link here
Beach House: Bloom, Depression Cherry, Thank Your Lucky Stars (Vinyl, Download)
Also streaming in Master Quality Audio on Tidal. Link here and here and here
Sean Lennon & Les Claypool: Monolith of Phobos (Vinyl, Download)
Sean Lennon & Goastt: Midnight Sun (Vinyl, Download)
Also streaming on Tidal. Link here
Sebadoh: Defend Yourself (Vinyl, Download)
Also streaming on Tidal. Link here
Interpol: Turn On The Bright Lights, Interpol, Antics (Vinyl)
Also streaming on Tidal. Link here and here and here
Tribecastan: New Songs From The Old Country, Five Star Cave (CD)
Also streaming on Tidal. Link here and here
Foo Fighters: Sound City (Blu-ray Disc)
Depeche Mode: Live In Berlin (Surround Sound DVD)
Also streaming on Tidal. Link here
Beck: Morning Phase (Vinyl, Download)
Also streaming in Master Quality Audio on Tidal. Link here
We hope you find this sort of round up useful. Depending on the feedback we receive we may pull together another sequel round up like this for you as there are many other albums worthy of your attention, reviews of which you may have missed. There is so much good new music out there worth exploring, not just the old favorites. Thank you for reading and actively re-sharing our stories. All of us here at Audiophilereview appreciate your support.
