Dear FLG

From your open letter:

“I agree that taste is relative, but was wondering what you want out of music? And further what you think I want out of music?”

I can answer with some authority on what I want out of music. I've got a couple of priorities. Speaking really roughly, you could put the albums I really like into three groups: albums by songwriters I like, albums by composers/performers that I like, and albums by rock bands that I like.

I like songwriters who develop conceptual worlds across their albums and careers. (Not that they'd describe their own work this way.) Phil Elverum from The Microphones and Mount Eerie basically has a whole personal mythology set up at this point, and I dig that. Jason Molina from Magnolia Electric Company writes album after album about lonely wanderers guided by the north star and seeking the blues, and I always love it. I can let albums from guys like this really get into my head; I'll pore over the lyrics or just lie back and do nothing but listen to the album.

I'm pretty into mathematics, and I think that has something to do with why I like counterpoint so much. If I want pure music, I will often go for English Renaissance or for Bach. Sometimes Handel, but I don't feel Handel's music as deeply as I do Bach's. And I'm no jazz-head, but I get something good out of the interplay in Miles Davis's modal stuff. I know enough about music theory to get the barest intuition of what goes on in really great music, and sometimes it's really frustrating when I can tell that I'm missing something important. At some point, I want to study up and get better at interpreting art music. Basically, I like art music that pushes the interplay of melodic and/or harmonic lines.

While I'm rather comfortable with my taste in lyricists and in art music, I'm a little bit at odds with myself on what I want out of a rock band. It's a bit Dionysian, I guess, but I like bands that I can really get caught up in: Springsteen (oh, Springsteen!), punk-rock bands like Superchunk, a whole bunch of local bands in Chapel Hill or Durham… For a time, I was really into local music, and I've come to get a big kick out of seeing a good band in a small room — like, 400 people or less. But a big draw here is catharsis and community, even more than aesthetic merit.

I could go on and on here, talking about exceptions and outliers, but it would probably just be for me. As for what I think you (that is, FLG) want out of music, all I have to go on is your “currently listening” postings and your comment that you'd take Journey over Radiohead. I am guessing — and I could be totally wrong in this — that you go for strong melody and solid rhythm. Do you usually listen to music while doing other things? Do you tend to like songs that have some presence in pop culture, or is it more that those are the videos that are easy to find on YouTube? My hypothesis is that strong melody (or “hook”) and competent-to-exceptional performance are key to your taste in music. Don't be mad at me if I'm wrong, please.

By the way, I'd pick Radiohead over Journey ninety-nine times out of a hundred because the only Journey song I know is “Don't Stop Believing,” whereas I've really come to like a bunch of Radiohead songs.

Yours,

-wrb

PS Here are some videos.