Review by Kevin Laskey

The rock critic Lester Bangs dreamed of having a basement filled with every album of music ever made. This idea makes more sense from a collector’s perspective than a listener’s—the sense of completion is what’s important here, rather than the practical ability to actually enjoy that immense amount of media. Choosing one object out of so many can be psychologically incapacitating, hence the store layout of Trader Joe’s and the design of a Chipotle’s menu—and, from a musical standpoint, Igor Stravinsky’s thought that “the more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self.” If one wants to discover new music, just having it available in one’s basement (or computer or phone or local library) isn’t enough. There has be a “Lester Bangs Decimal System” to help you find the music you weren’t necessarily looking for, something that replaces the old experience of thumbing through used LPs at a record store, where it was possible to make intuitive choices based on album art or the supporting players on a session.