For the first time in my life, I’ve discovered the joy of running. I knew it was actual joy when I went for my run yesterday despite not having my Walkman for musical accompaniment, and still had a good time. I got my listens in on this next album in the car and on today’s run, so it’s all golden.
Disc 1494 is…. Spotify is Surveillance
Artist: Evan Greer
Year of Release: 2021
What’s up with the Cover? This is your brain on streaming services. Not the joy of a record blowing you back into your leather armchair. Not the dancing musical notes the denote the sound of your favourite song whirling about you. Instead, a bunch of data tendrils, broadcasting music in, and user data out.
How I Came To Know It: I read a review and decided to give it a listen. The review was lukewarm, but I liked it more than the reviewers. This record is not available on CD or vinyl. It was available on cassette (wtf?) but since this isn’t 1984, and since cassettes are the fucking worst, I opted for digital download.
How It Stacks Up: This is my only Evan Greer album so there is nothing to stack up against.
Ratings: 4 stars
Some people just have a knack for emotional anthems, and Evan Greer is one of those people. In their case, these anthems take the form of post-punk flavoured pop music, the songs are either intensely personal or intensely political, but they are always…intense.
On the intensely personal side, Greer does pretty much the best version I’ve heard of the “how COVID makes me feel” theme. A lot of artists wrote songs while experiencing lockdown (and the total inability to tour or perform for audiences). Greer puts words and music to the experience that are hard to hear at times, but also inspiring. On “Back Row” they experience the loss of live music as a fan, extrapolating that isolation to the deeper loss of basic human contact:
“I regret every single show
That I spent in the back row
Talking shit on my phone
Behind a table all alone
Every party that I skipped
Every friend I lost touch with
But when the crowd would sing along
It felt like we belonged”
And on “Willing to Wait” they tackle the ‘hunker down’ experience we all felt as we sat through lockdowns and social restrictions, gutting it out and waiting for it to end. Evan Greer put the pandemic’s darkest hours to good use. “Back Row” is a lighter in the air sing-along and “Willing to Wait” is a slow dance where you cling to your partner or just hug yourself, as individual mood and circumstance allows. Both are future COVID classics.
On the political front, Greer wears their opinions on their sleeve, tackling politics, sexual identity and even the architecture of the internet. On “Surveillance Capitalism” they even go after the streaming industry. Well, kind of - the more so if you factor in the album title. Since this is a music blog let’s apply the music lens to these lines from the song:
“Once consent was manufactured
Now it’s harvested for clicks
Algorithms make decisions
Filter bubbles make us sick”
Whether your pretend friend is Alexa, Siri or Hey Google, you have the power to turn off that voice recognition and manually pick the songs you want to listen to. Like in olden times, you could dig through your records or scroll through your tunes to find ones that appeal to you, and not just those that might be top of mind. Maybe you could even (gasp!) build your own playlist from music you discover for yourself or through friends. If you need some good old fashioned human recommendations, you’re already in the right place!
But I digress. The record ends with a cover of John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery”, which Greer has retitled “Punk Rock Angel from Montgomery.” Given this is a cover (and really punk-adjacent rather than punk if I’m splitting hairs) I’m not sure why they renamed the tune. I found this attempt to retitle the tune irksome, but I did love the cover. Not the classic Bonnie Raitt version, but still pretty dope.
“Spotify is Surveillance” is an EP and is all over in 22 minutes, leaving me wanting more. You might agree with some of what they have to say, and you might not, but the record is a good one either way.
Best tracks: Back Row, Willing to Wait, Punk Rock Angel from Montgomery
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