A World to Discover

I walked for over an hour to go to my nearest mall and back to pick up a copy of Exclaim yesterday. If you don’t know, it’s a free monthly music publication that can be found all over Canada. Although clearly it was far easier to get when I was in downtown Toronto than in London, ON, where I am for the summer! I’ve been reading it pretty consistently for a year now, and it’s a really fantastic publication.

The reason that it’s inspiring a post though, is that I had a strange moment when I looked at the cover in my local HMV. I had been listening to Miracle Fortress on the way over, and look who’s on the cover! Also, I’d been championing Panda Bear to my friends for a couple of weeks, and there he is on the cover too. Actually, this happens all the time to me, in that it’s often music that I listen to that is featured. So either I’m the perfect target audience, or where I live has really influenced my music taste.

I really love Toronto’s music scene. There’s no shortage of bands to go see (just looking at the tickets for sale page on Soundscapes makes me envious now that I’m not in the city for the next couple of months). There’s amazing independent record shops (living a ten minute walk from Sonic Boom made for some great record-shopping times). There’s great festivals and events (still sad I’m missing NXNE). I’m discovering new music all of the time and definitely do not have a shortage of new albums to listen to. So why complain?

I guess I’m just having one of those moments when I realize that there’s more out there than I could possibly ever listen to. I’m scared I’m missing out on something fantastic, even though I know that there’s no way I could ever hear all of the music being produced.

A lot of the musicians I listen to are at least tangentially connected to each other. I have this weird pattern where I’ll get really into an artist, only to discover I’ve actually been hearing their voice for years. Evidence: when I fell completely in love with Owen Pallett’s music, I realized he was actually the non-Zach voice on Beirut’s Cliquot. I got really into Gentleman Reg, then learned he was the other voice in the Final Fantasy song Library.

I love my Toronto music scene bubble, and I’ve found some incredible music by living in the city and absorbing its culture, but I’m starting to wonder if I should venture out. There’s a whole world to discover!

(Originally posted May 11)