One of the things I think music needs is better curators. We need actual human beings that go through the process of listening to stuff, finding the things they like, and then sharing it in a way that makes it easy for others to discover. Robots are inherently bad at this process. The robots think that just because I listen to They Might Be Giants and Ben Folds Five that I’ll also want to listen to Harvey Danger and the Bearnaked Ladies. The robots are morons. I hate both of those bands.

But people, on the other hand, make for great curators. Music is a subjective art form where people’s personal tastes make all the difference. If someone is known to have great taste in things, I am quite likely to take their recommendations to heart. And be curious about and listen to what they have to say.

One of my favorite curators for the Seattle music is Local Roots Music Northwest. It’s a syndicated radio program dedicated to playing local music from the Pacific Northwest artists. It can be heard on four or five radio stations, and streamed directly from their website. They also host monthly local songwriter showcases in Portland and Tacoma.

They have an incredible newsletter. It gives the rundown on the playlist for the show. And each week features a “featured artist”.

The Local Roots Northwest newsletter is where I discovered Anna Tivel who is fantastic! (I had no idea she existed before because I don’t know why). I’ve listened to her album Living Thing about a billion times over the last few weeks. It is released on Fluff And Gravy Records, which might be favorite current label (Margo Cilker, Drunken Prayer, Jenny Don’t and The Spurs, and a bunch more).

It was a no brainer to buy Ana Tivel’s album off of Bandcamp.

Coincidentally enough, I found out about Local Roots through another great curator of local artists, The Bushwick Book Club Seattle, I was at one of their shows and Victoria Fragoso, whos is one of the organizers of Local Roots, was performing that night. The host for the evening mentioned Local Roots. It sounded cool to me so I looked it up and it was in fact super cool.

Good curation leads to better community. The robots can fuck off.