I love the Internet and what it does for our daily lives. I can order a coffee, meet new friends, discover new music, or partake in my favorite hobby, which is arguing with strangers about me being a “libtard-snowflake” asshole. But, for all of the drunken Amazon purchases I’ve made, or have fallen down the rabbit hole researching where to buy human skulls, I got beef with Internet culture, too.
The Internet is cool because it’s a vast, open sea of stuff. You can find any weird thing you’ve ever wanted, or least read about it in geeky, finite detail. But, one thing the Internet culture sucks at is music and helping musicians get known.
Look, I know you’re reading a music blog. You’re special. You give a shit. Music is your passion. Unfortunately for most of the folks in your life, they ain’t searching for new hotness by the unknowns. They like to be handed stuff. (Don’t believe me? Explain why you’ve gotta explain to folks who like pop country what the fuck it is that real country sounds like, stuff they like, but didn’t know existed – because it wasn’t handed to them by the CMT culture. It’s also a miracle that platform has thrived against all odds, but so has Fox News, so who knows? ANYWHOOO….)
Radio, MTV, genre magazines, all of these platforms used to promote and push bands. We got Sabbath and Zeppelin because those riffs dominated rock radio. A few djs heard the Beatles and knew they were onto some shit. Prince was big at the end of the 70’s, but he owes a lot of his career to his videos being pushed by MTV. Same goes for just about every iconic act and the respective B and C squads that followed. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it helped create scenes or at least create scenes that spilled out from the mainstream.
But, because the Interwebz are so vast, so encompassing, it’s eaten all of those forms of media. The Internet is how most of us find new music. And while it’s great it’s easy to discover new, cool bands, a lot of bands get swept aside or just not the love they deserve, and frustratingly so. There’s a vacuum of hype and “it” factor that moves through the fog, and many times it’s justified, and others, not so much (IE: Chainsmokers, Future, etc.)
But one of those bands I’ve written about before is Quiet Hollers. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why the masses are not obsessed with this band. They pack a wallop that’s country, but punky, they go Mozart soft, they go balls deep, and then they drop tracks that are straight up Radiohead style. The Quiet Hollers are everything a music blogger creams their shorts over.
On their new song "Wheel," Quiet Hollers tap into a spacey, ghost-like trance that feels more like Ambien’d out Prince meets My Morning Jacket. How fucking rad is that? The vibes are distant and planetary and feel like Dr. Manhattan sitting on that rock trying to sort out his opinion on humans. This isn’t country music by most definitions, but it’s unique and demands attention. With acts like Sturgill Simpson, Colter Wall, and Jason Isbell taking a lot of risks in their music, there’s room at the table for more acts like Quiet Hollers.
If we had that 120 Minutes culture of the past, Quiet Hollers would be darlings. People need to know about more music, and the good stuff, to boot. That’s the odd hole the Internet leaves us in, because we have so much at our fingertips, that pulse of availability is hard to read, sometimes.
So lets’ do something about this in 2017. If you love good music and want to see, good humans thrive. See Quiet Hollers shows. Buy their merch and tell your friends about them. "Wheel" is too good. It’s too unique to go by the wayside. People need the new Quiet Hollers record when it drops, and for our sake, I hope all of the other Internet folks make it arrive with a thunderclap.
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The album this song is from, Amen Breaks, is out Friday. You can pre-order it here.
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