Discovering New Music

photo by niro9 via pixabay

Last week, Of Monsters and Men dropped their new album, so all I've been doing this week is listening to music. I've been a fan of Of Monsters and Men since their first single Little Talks hit the radio over a decade ago, and their new album All Is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade came at the right time for me. The songs are filled with a gentle acknowledgement of melancholy and the pain that comes from caring. The music is something that resonates in time with the echoes between my lungs and my heart; something I can sit with and simply feel seen, heard, and understood.

As I sat with the music, my Spotify cycled through suggested songs. YouTube’s algorithm presented new and old artists. A week ago, I was obsessed with a new album dropping from a favorite band, and now I’m reminded what it’s like to be obsessed with music in general. I go through phases of seeking new music, and this current phase has hit me hard.

Not only have I discovered upcoming albums from artists that I love like Haley Heynderickx and Florence and the Machine, I've been reintroduced to their music with a new lens. Listening to Florence and the Machine’s album Dance Fever hits so much harder now that I'm closer to the age she was when she was composing it. I can understand her emotional struggles with art and womanhood in a way I wasn't able to when it first dropped three years ago. 

I have also discovered many new artists that make me giddy over music and the thrill of discovering a new favorite song. Rabitology is a small indie artist with a short backlog of songs, but all of them are incredible. I’m not a music critic, so I have no words to describe the mastery the singer, Nat Timmerman, has over tempo—only that it sounds like something I've never quite heard before. Her single Preybirds is a good example of this, and I'm also a huge fan of The Bog Bodies (a reference to the infamous big bodies in Ireland).

I used to burn CDs to create my own mixtapes. These days, I'm dancing around the digital landscape, bouncing from new artist to new song with the same messy theming and excitement as a child finger painting for the first time. At some point, I may take the time to curate this music into new playlists, but for now, I'm reliving the joy of discovery.