How About That: minor me

A curious thing happens when you sign up for your free Blogger account and start spewing a bunch of tangentially music-related thoughts into the heartless ether: people start sending you music. (I feel like I've written those exact words before. If I have, I apologize. But cut me some slack, okay? You big bully. I'm still trying to regain my footing here.) There's nothing like finding yourself deputized as "press" to tickle your ego and your sense of the absurd, especially when you're just some loser whose expertise consists of going to a lot of shows and being a bit too in love with the sound of your own voice.

It takes a lot to make these music submissions stand out. They seem to fall into three categories: unapologetic press releases; apologetic press releases (which may open with, "Hi 704! I really like your blog! I hope you are doing well..." before proceeding with the promotional boilerplate); and actual letters from real human beings who want you to hear their music. Entries in the latter category generally stand out the most, if only because I feel compelled to reply to them out of politeness. (What a swell guy I am, right? I know. I know. Really, it's nothing.) There's some variation within those categories, though, the type of thing that can make a standard press release stand out. For example, I have a great deal of respect for a band called Funeral Club even though I've never heard their music. I just love the fact that they've sent me their album four times. I'm afraid to listen to it, lest I discover that their talent doesn't match their tenacity.

These submissions have tapered off of late. I guess publicists and artists alike have finally figured out that I'm probably not going to write about their bands and, even if I do, and even if I like their music very much, I probably won't come up with anything they can use. Any positive words I write will be undermined by the rest of the text, which will no doubt deal with how I'm frequently drunk and generally not too astute.

But I very much want to keep receiving free music. Not because I need it, or enjoy it, but because who wouldn't like to feel like an influential tastemaker for a few seconds every day? Plus, if I'm going to maintain this current writing schedule, I need stuff to write about. Seasons and Manhattan Murder Mystery can only get a guy so far. Pretty far, but still....

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So, to demonstrate that sending me free music isn't as futile as most of life's endeavors, I'll turn you on to minor me. Sure, Edgar from minor me first sent me his music about seven months ago, but this just goes to show that you should never give up, and one day, you too--yes, you--might be featured in this very space. (Also, for the record, Edgar's email was the only one I've yet received that explicitly acknowledged that I might not like his music, and that that would okay with him.)

minor me plays a low-key, lo-fi brand of pop that's weirdly intimate, yet it remains melodic and almost sunny, assuming you don't listen to the lyrics too closely. There aren't many songs out there like the one below, where a sentiment like, "When you wrote that letter / It ripped me to three / It ripped me completely," sounds almost like a celebration, or at the very least an exercise in buoyant acceptance. It's that thick streak of irony (their song "surfin' usa," for example, is most decidedly not about surfin' in the USA), when coupled with a delicate and sincere voice, that makes minor me such a promising project. That tension between toe-tapping form and heartrending content suggests a wise, formidable talent at work.

You can download all of minor me's stuff for free here. Why not, right?