Remember how March was approximately 12.5 years long? Remember how April wasn’t even like, its normal number of days long? What the hell is that about?

In March, even before isolation started, I changed the configuration of how I use Spotify on my desktop computer at work and home so that I could see the little Friend Activity tab while I was doing other things and started sort of paying attention to what people were listening to, partly because I’m p voyeuristic by nature, partly because I thought it might be funny (I feel about 97% confident that I know a complete stranger’s sex playlist now!) and I ended up getting super into it and playing Spotify Chase while dicking around on the internet and half-assing something I’m supposed to be doing.

By Spotify Chase, I mean, hitting the songs that people are listening to that I don’t know and adding to them my queue and seeing what’s what. I canNOT recommend it enough as both a way to get to know friends and strangers better, but also because you will find some jams! And a lot of them will probably not be anything you would have found otherwise! Unless all your friends are boring or have identical taste to you, I guess, but that’s a You Problem, so sort that shit out on your own time.

ANYWAY, I have discovered a lot of jams this way!

The first album it gave to me is 070 Shake’s Modus Vivendi which is not something that the algorithm could have served me, so big thanks to the kid I went to high school with but only interacted with maybe twice and I don’t think liked me AT ALL, but for some reason has been my friend on various internet platforms post-graduation all the way back to like, XANGA. Also, I’ve seen Ryland Blackinton listening to it like, three times now, so that’s got to be a good sign.

The album is great, chill and artful and with a nice pace from beginning to end and it’s somehow something that I can both put on and forget about and something I can pay attention to the entire way through. That’s magic, man.

It also gave me Atoms for Peace, AMOK, which is a Thom Yorke fronted ~supergroup project from 2013 that I don’t think would have ever reached me algorithmically based on how much I don’t listen to Radiohead. This is also a well-paced album that I can drift with or focus on, but the real star is “Ingenue” which I have listened to on repeat for long stretches of time more than once.

My last album for the month — because I truly didn’t manage to do… anything in all of April except listen to music and write 50k words that will never actually go anywhere — was not served to me by either the Algorithm or Spotify Chase, but instead is an old fave’s new one I was greatly anticipating. Pokey LaFarge’s Rock Bottom Rhapsody is so, so, so good and satisfying. It feels almost like a movie score except it also feels like it’s telling a story. we were supposed to be seeing Pokey in June in Minneapolis, but it’s been rescheduled for 2021 already, which seems so far away as to be impossible, while also seeming so soon as to be hopelessly optimistic about the state of things. Life and art in quarantine, eh?