How do you find new music when no one writes about it anymore?

Bandcamp is over, Pitchfork has been shredded and mainstream music journalism's last gasp is nigh. So, what's next?

Every Friday, my streaming service of choice sends me a playlist of new music it thinks I’ll like.

Every Friday, I open that playlist with a sense of optimism, hopeful I’m about to discover a bunch of excellent new songs and artists.

And every Friday, I’m left feeling disappointed.

Invariably, almost inevitably, that playlist sucks.

I guess that’s what happens when you leave things up to algorithmically-driven machines.

That algorithm doesn’t know me. It doesn’t read my mood. It doesn’t ask me how my week’s been. It can’t and will never know if I feel like listening to old man boom-bap rap, neck-snapping punk-rock or moody minimalist UK dubstep from 2009.

So it serves me up a randomly-generated playlist of new releases from artists I’ve listened to at some stage in the past six months, hoping something might stick.

So, I’m forced to use other methods to find music.

Old school methods.

Like reading websites.

Or scouring blogs.

But those options are getting thin on the ground.

Over the past few months, mainstream music journalism has fallen apart. We’ve lost almost all of our music journalists. We’ve stopped covering festivals and many concerts. Stuff’s music section has disappeared entirely (along with seven years of my work).

When the report into all this, New Mirrors, came out late last year, it felt like New Zealand might be the canary in the coal mine.

It seems like it was. Bandcamp has been gutted, Pitchfork has been shredded. The future, for the mainstream, is bleak. (This year has been full of terrible news for journalism, like Sports Illustrated’s entire staff being laid off, and LA Times cuts causing disarray in their newsroom.)

It’s only January 26. It’s a Friday. There’s a long weekend coming up (in Auckland, at least). The sun’s out. It’s 25 degrees. Our dog is snoring under the table I’m writing on.

This is too depressing to get into right now.

So I want to talk about brighter things.

How do you find new music when no one writes about it anymore?

My friend Chris has an answer. Every weekday this year, he’s set himself a task: to listen to an album he hasn’t heard, then write a short review about it and post the results to social media (you can follow his progress here).

“I remain unimpressed,” he wrote about Jessie Ware’s That! Feels Good!; “I don't think Hey U X is a perfect 10/10 album, but it’s damn close,” he said about Benee’s 2020 debut.

As I wrote on Wednesday, it’s boom times at JB Hi-Fi. The retail chain is expanding, and much of it is thanks to its vinyl bins being emptied. So, it’s putting out a free magazine full of reviews from veteran critic Graham Reid. “A risky, assertive and thoroughly enjoyable celebration of noise,” he wrote about The Breeders’ 1993 classic Last Splash, much of which was played live at last weekend’s Foo Fighters show.

Another friend posted his top 10 albums of 2023 on Instagram along with footage and audio of each record spinning on his turntable. They’re eclectic choices that I wouldn’t normally listen to, but I’ve found some absolute gems in amongst some pretty hard and heavy stuff (go listen to H31R’s Headspace immediately).

I’ve already written about my mate Rob who still makes CD-R mixtapes and forces himself to listen to each one a set number of times in his car in the belief that will help him discover new artists. I detailed his crazed methods here.

I’m of the firm belief that people still want to discover music, that most don’t just want to sit there and listen to the same stuff they were listening to in their 20s.

So, if the algorithms are broken, and music journalism is dying, how do we find new music?

Maybe this is it, right here, right now, just asking friends a simple question.

What are you listening to?

So, today, I’m asking you that question.

If we all get involved and share a few songs maybe we’ll make ourselves a tidy little playlist to enjoy over the weekend.

So, I’ll kick things off. Here’s are five songs from five albums I’m enjoying right now

Yes, I realise these are all quite noisy songs, but that’s just my vibe right now I guess.

If only this morning’s algorithm could have picked up on that.

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Sleater Kenney – ‘Untidy Creature’

I think I’d lumped Sleater Kinney into the same basket as Warpaint, a band a bit too poppy and shoegazy for me. Big mistake. Much of the now-duo’s new album, Little Rope, goes hard, full of spiky, Pixies-aping punk-grunge that sounds twisted and gnarly. As this great Pitchfork review says, there’s real pain behind this record. (Go read that quick in case Pitchfork gets deleted, which honestly wouldn’t be a surprise.)

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Idles – ‘Gift Horse’

Another band I’d ignored and another big mistake. I finally caught up with them when I snuck into their mid-winter Spark Arena show and loved their minimalist take on punk-rock. Tangk, the Bristol band’s fifth album, is due out on February 16, and all of the singles released so far seethe with tension. ‘Gift Horse’ is my favourite thanks to its volcanic eruption of a chorus.

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Blondshell – ‘Street Rat’

She got big on the back of ‘Veronica Mars’, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Sabrina Teitelbaum’s ode to the joy of a 2004 TV binge. But Blondshell’s self-titled debut shows that was no fluke. This album has been on high rotate in my house, and you can see why for yourself when she plays Laneway in, what, like 10 days or something? Madness!

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Wednesday – ‘Bull Believer’

This song. This song. This is the song I’m going to be up front at Whammy Bar on February 22 to see Wednesday play live, a snarling eight-minute anthem that ends with singer Karly Hartzman wailing “Finish him” over and over like she’s stuck in a Mortal Kombat time loop watching Saw films and listening to Tool play on double-speed. Honestly, this band. This band.

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DARTZ – ‘Paradise’

The lineage for hard-drinking New Zealand acts can be traced from Th’ Dudes to Deja Voodoo and now DARTZ, who seem incapable of writing a song about anything other than the joys of drinking beer with your mates. ‘Paradise’, from their upcoming album Dangerous Day to be a Cold One, puts a big dumb smile on my face, pure and simple.

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OK, it’s your turn! Post your own musical suggestions below. And while you’re here, consider upgrading your subscription to enjoy full access to Boiler Room, including access to the archives, like my recent deep dive into my terrible neighbour…