Last week I picked up the new Andrew Bird and Animal Collective, two albums I've been looking forward to for a few months now. It's been kind of refreshing to have them both enter my world. In December I was so distracted by looking back on everything I purchased in 2008, and I've also been on an acquiring spree that has me re-buying or re-listening to old albums that have disappeared from my collection in the last ten years. Anyway, for whatever reason I've been listening to a lot of music, both familiar and not, with only a light-to-medium focus. Now these two albums have come along and have basically pushed everything else out; they're consuming all my time (especially, predictably, the Bird).
I probably listened to Noble Beast and Merriweather Post Pavilion three or four times each before they clicked. Until then they were vaguely good collections of sounds and hooks and random flashes of brilliance. But, like many records (especially the good ones), I had to hear them a few times before I could really pick out what I was loving, what made sense. Listening to them was like hearing a foreign language slowly morph into broken English. (Eventually it will be fluid English, though I'm not there yet with either album. Another way to think of it might be that an album needs to click three times, like a combination lock. As of today Animal Collective has clicked once and Andrew Bird has clicked twice; more on Noble Beast next week, I think.)
I've begun walking to work again—about three miles, or a little under one hour, or one album. Walking to work in the morning, especially at this time of year, when the Southern California weather is crisp and the mornings have the slightest bite to them, is my favorite way to consume an album. It's probably no coincidence that Noble Beast clicked for me the morning I took it for a walk to work. Merriweather Post Pavilion clicked on the same day, when I walked home just as the light went away. I'd forgotten just how pleasurable that is: to just walk with a record. Not work out, not drive, not surf the internet or read, not cook, not anything. Just walk. Me, my headphones, neighborhood streets, a cup of coffee. And one album. It's like my own personal communion with my record collection. The experience can't be shared with anyone.
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