New music.

The 90s was a weird time for music. The whole decade is essentially typified by the alternative genre, and I'll just say that for me, most of what came from alternative was a wash - so purposefully un-melodic and apathetic it made me want to put a gun to my head. The snap-back from those long, painful years was the bright, shiny, pointless pop of Britney, Backstreet Boys, etc.; we clearly got what we deserved.

But this blog post isn't about shitty 90s music. I'm just prefacing to get to where I want to go. By the early 2000s I was hearing songs that gave me hope for music's future. Since then popular music in most genres has returned to melodic form, and even in increasingly sub-subgenres like dream pop and post-dubstep and EDM, writers and producers are still discovering the infinite ways to spin and wield a dope melodic/harmonic progression. Think of La Roux's 'Bulletproof,' Goyte's 'Somebody That I Used To Know' - hell, even Nicki Minaj's 'Superbass' has an earworm.

Which brings me to today, and my happiness at discovering some new musicians to listen to who, in a different decade, would have fallen prey to the times, but here and now are fantastic.

First up is Banks (first name Jillian), discovered in the car stereo of a friend last week. She's got a couple of albums out in the 'alt-pop' genre, which is dominated by 'sultry [women] singers backed by uber-hip electronic beatscapes,' something I happen to very much enjoy, thank you. I especially appreciate her use of interwoven vocal motifs in the absence of acoustic instrumentation, and she consistently sets a wonderfully evocative, moody atmosphere. Although after several methodical previews of both albums via iTunes I only came away purchasing a handful of songs, the point is that she's in the right direction and she's something new to listen to.

(One thing I realized after obsessively listening to those songs was that they were everything I wished so much that Ellie Goulding's third album, Delirium, would be, and in fact, Banks sounds a lot like Halcyon-era Goulding. It makes me sad that Goulding abandoned a perfect sound and structure in favor of 'progress' or 'love' or whatever, and I hope that on her next album she gets back to what works best)

In the reviews for one of Banks' albums someone suggested she pair up with James Blake. So I looked him up and...story time.