Spotify’s “Enhance” Feature Is Awesome

So, I've been going through a bit of a shift in the kind of music I want to listen to lately. For the last, god, 10 years, I've been mostly listening to Haken, Devin Townsend, some off-beat things like Diablo Swing Orchestra, and a fair bit of Nine Inch Nails. Some bands akin to that, as well, like Ayria.

What I haven't been listening to much of has been blues-centric rock. It's mostly been a either industrial metal, or prog. In-fact, even before that, I wasn't ever really that into this kind of sound historically, and ironically enough haven't had a well-curated list of things from this sound.

But over the last few years, my wife, Kate has really gotten into a lot of folk rock, and since we live in a camper, her tastes seem to have started to bleed into my tastes lately. Or at least, that's what I think it is. Hell, it could just as easily be because I've been playing a lot of older rock tracks like Blue Suede Shoes and Leroy Brown while performing here at the campground this summer. Either way, I've found myself wanting to listen to music that's a lot more approachable than the weirder stuff like this DSO track, or Haken's Cockroach King. Conversely, it's heavy in a very different way than the noisy stuff like Devin Townsend's Deconstruction album, all of which are things that I've historically been into.

I'd say the closest I've ever gotten to this sound is what I can only describe as "objectively cool music". When you hear Casualties of Cool, or S.G Goodman's The Way I talk, you go "DAMN they're so cool." The music is usually straight forward with simple, consistent time signatures, predictable song formats, and simple, yet fantastic hooks.

Anyway, I realized I had a few songs that recently caught my attention that kinda aligned with this sound, so I threw them together in a playlist along with a couple samples that seemed adjacent to it, and clicked on Spotify's magic "Enhance" button.

And...whoa! It actually worked! Historically this hasn't been very effective for me. It's unclear why exactly, but usually the music on the song wouldn't fit the vibe I was looking for well enough. Maybe I was trying to be too specific then. Maybe it's just because the music is easier to categorize, who knows?