Shout out to my ex

New music. There is always more new music then anyone can compartmentalise.

This is as it should be. If I fail to push new music your way this is a failure on my part, not the music’s. This is true of anyone writing about music, anyone who holds a cluster of keys to treasure chests in their grimy, slimy hands. If I fail to push new music your way this is an indication that my aural senses have packed up (momentarily, hopefully) not that there is no choice out there. (Please do not confuse good with bad. Unnecessary and uncalled-for.) Also, listening to old music, even old music that you are incredibly familiar with, is like listening to new music. The circumstances change, the context, the numbers of cups of coffee drunk.

Can you do me a favour, you relative handful of a reader? Please comment on this post – and here, not on Facebook. Leave one recommendation or more behind and begin to overload my synapses. Pass this post on to another, and ask them to do the same. Make it a pyramid, make it a bar chart, make it human. My son playing his trumpet is new music. New music is new music. Ed Sheeran is new music. Beyoncé giving birth is new music. There are no hard and fast rules here. Maybe that is what people want? Hard and fast rules. Maybe that is what successful music criticism is: hard and fast rules. Please. Do it.

Break out the compartments. And spread the word. Always.

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