I have admired the work over at New Bands For Old Heads since my early days here at Substack. The conceit is pretty simple; take a snippet of old, often familiar music and then use it as a reference point to find new artists currently working in the same sonic vein.
Gabbie, the woman behind New Bands, does a marvelous job of taking a few seconds of a song by a band like New Order and turning it into a recommendation for an artist like Preoccupations. Not only is Gabbie incredibly adept at pulling great new music out the algorithmic ether, she’s also a gifted writer. New Bands For Old Heads is consistently a great read for a music fan of any stripe.
During our conversation, we talk about Gabbie’s experience growing up in a house of immigrant parents and the soviet bard songs she listened to and learned to love as a youngster. In discussing that artform, Gabbie even begins to wonder if her love for it clouded her ability to appreciate American folks artists like Bob Dylan. We also hit on what a lightning bolt the ‘You Oughta Know’ video by Alanis Morrisette was for a girl of just nine or ten.
In our chat, Gabbie and I delve into what she refers to as “nostalgia mining” a sort of avenue to find ways to point people in the direction of interesting new artists. I confess to Gabbie that in middle age my appetite for new sounds is severely lacking; a condition that I have already written about here at WAIM. We also talk about how our tastes change and how they even become muted as we get older.
Gabbie talks openly about being a woman writing about the male dominated world of rock and roll. We talk about mansplaining, cover the occasional ugliness of the comments section - which she says is less severe on Substack - and she shares a shining example of fragile masculinity. You’ll also find talk about the feral nature of Gen X youths, confronting the mortality of our parents, and how you’ll never be able to keep politics out of art.
And of course, we cannot talk about music for an hour in the 21st century without having to handle the albatross of Spotify. Gabbie and I go over some of our shared qualms with streaming and we confront the reality that we are not going back to a physical media landscape, and why that is a good thing. There is a load here to love including a quartet of music recommendations from Gabbie to get your summer listening kicked off on the right foot.
Enjoy!
Cheers,
Matty C
