One of the downsides of being able to listen to whatever music you want whenever you want to is being able to listen to whatever music you want whenever you want to. When old people like me wax rhapsodic about record stores, it's not some obsession with nostalgia or fear of change that drives us -- it's remembering the safety of a curated selection. Now when I listen to music, my overwhelming sense is one of worry that I may be missing out.



Many businesses have sprung up around delivering the listener a selected music experience, from traditional magazines to more elaborate web aggregators. The Hype Machine takes roughly 1,500 music blogs and orders them according to post date and "loves"; there is more than an album's worth of songs on each page, and you can go back on the site over 100 pages, which takes you to music posted... last week. There is a profanity-exclaiming amount of music out there.



Given this state of music listening, I advocate, beyond reading The Tyee, of course, a "let's get lost" approach. Pick any site (I prefer Bandcamp and SoundCloud and just start clicking around. For example, I clicked Pop on SoundCloud, scrolled a few clicks, and came across The Range of Light Wilderness, whose self-titled album features such lovely harmonies as dreams are made of. 



"under your spell" recalls the all-too short summer -- weeks? days? -- that we only just enjoyed, and as such its wistful tale of love so binding it hurts hits a little closer to home. Album opener "through the leaves" is evocative of the fall day it describes, a lazy beat keeping time to delicately plucked notes and extended harmonies, providing the perfect accompaniment to a walk in the forest, with changing leaves set to happen, I'd say, next Tuesday.