The Branches - Long Arm (2011)

Jazzy, tripped-out beats that keep a loose structure and flow into each other nicely.

This cropped up as a spotify suggestion after a playlist was done. I suppose Spotify ought to know what I like, for as much as I use it. I suppose it’s my contrary nature or something, but I don’t usually trust what spotify suggests for me. I’d much rather pick it myself.

Suggestions–on Spotify, Youtube, or anywhere else–work because you’re not as odd or interesting as you think you are. That’s a difficult fact to wrestle with (at least for me), but if you have enough information about the content, it’s not that hard to find things that sound like what you play a lot.

That said, Spotify’s algorithm doesn’t have all the information, espeically the stuff that only makes sense in my head. Whenever I look at a music platform I like to see what they suggest as “like Bob Dylan.” The Band, sure. Leonard Cohen and Paul Simon because they’re poetic lyricists of the same generation. But no algorithm is going to suggest Tallest Man On Earth or Handsome Family–even though there’s a lot of similar territory being covered conceptually–or even John Wesley Harding, an artist who literally has a song about how he’s the bastard son of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. The algorithm will never understand why Tom Waits reminds me of Sun Ra, who sound nothing like each other but have similar energy to me. Or why I love The Pixies but I’ve never really heard a Sonic Youth song I liked much. And I know I like The Cure and REM, but if you throw the Smiths into one of one of my mixes again, I swear to fuck…

Anyway, I’ll get over myself. Spotify picked a pretty great record I’d never heard of, so credit where credit’s due.