Best of the No-Skip Albums

Herein I attempt to reply to your challenge of the Best No-Skip Albums while attempting to adhere to your wishy-washy criteria.

I refuse to put a pleasant album on here that can just drift by without me caring one way or the other. And I refuse to make this a complete list:

Radiohead - The Bends

Muse - Absolution

Muse - Origin of Symmetry

U2 - Joshua Tree

U2 - Achtung Baby

REM - Green

REM - Fables of the Reconstruction (Hey, what's this doing here? This isn't an REM classic!)

Guster - Goldfly

Guster - Lost and Gone Forever (I frequently use the name of this album in both UMD and primary classes)

Idlewild - Warnings/Promises

Idlewild - Make Another World

Idlewild - The Remote Part

Obi - THE ENTIRE FREAKING CATALOG OF OBI!! THE ALBUMS, THE B-SIDES!! WHEN WE DIE, PEOPLE WILL ASK US WHAT ERA WE LIVED IN AND WE WILL SAY "WHEN OBI'S MUSIC WAS AVAILABLE" AND PEOPLE WILL FALL DOWN AND WORSHIP US!

Isolde et Les Bens - L'Inconnu (only chose so as to appear pretentious)

The Standard - Wire Post to Wire

The Standard - Swimmer

Ivan and Alyosha - It's All Just Pretend

Parts and Labor - Constant Future

Parts and Labor - Receivers

Pela - Anytown Graffiti

Arcade Fire - Funeral

Better than Ezra - Deluxe

Of Monsters and Men: EVERYTHING THEY HAVE EVER DONE!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?? EVEN THE TOSSED AWAY SONG THEY CONTRIBUTED TO THE HUNGER GAMES SOUNDTRACK!! CELEBRATE THEM WHILE THEY LAST!!!

Belle and Sebastian - Boy with the Arab Strap

Black Keys - El Camino

Shins - Chutes Too Narrow

This is getting too long. Which means I am probably a liar. I am sure I hate one song on some of these albums, that I finally snap and say: "No! I have heard enough out of you Win Butler! SKIP!"

Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American

Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism

I can't keep going. I have too many. I am afraid I have failed. You set me up.

Elf Power - Walking With the Beggar Boys

See, now I am just putting down the names of albums! I could listen to Elf Power all the way through or I could skip every song saying: "Stop listening to a band named Elf Power! Stop believing in Elf Power! Stop saying those incantations to imbue yourself with self-said power!"

This list ends now.

The A-Z Listening Experience

To the reader: At the beginning of the year, I was listening to WTMD and they were playing some songs following a certain theme and I thought back to when 107.5 used to do the A-Z weekend where they played songs in alphabetical order. And then it hit me. I should do my own personal A-Z weekend except that it would likely take all year. I have since dubbed it my A-Z Listening Experience. Critics (Josh) have (has, because it is really only one person) described the quest as "brave," "daring," "quixotic," and "chilling." (Josh has also embarked upon his own A-Z Listening Experience.)

To Josh, because I need to get back to the dialogue form of this blog: What I didn't tell the readers in my note above and may have been something I have feared mentioning in our ongoing dialogues, is that this experience was partially driven by my insane desire to make my music feel nurtured and loved. The last two years, I have been pursuing the new on Spotify and after I finally pull the trigger to purchase a song or an album, I take it off my Spotify lists. It sits and sulks in my music catalog, looking haughtily at its new companions who seem so old and dated. Mystify (INXS) introduces itself and says, "Ah, yes, Doug once loved me, used to break into a run while mowing the lawn when I came on. But, that was long ago. The pain will subside soon enough." The new song (let's call it The Beigeness) doesn't respond. Just patiently waits for some device somewhere to summon it and let it entertain as it did so often through Spotify. But as the days and weeks pass, hope withers and it knows that when it is called upon, it might only decide to play itself at 128 kbps, not 256 kbps. 

That withering is what I am trying to stop. The clarion call has gone out: "We shall all be listened to!" Old songs and young songs alike are shaving, taking a bath, spritzing themselves with lavender and bay leaves, and lining themselves up, alphabetically, for their chance to shine. Some are nervous, having sat idly for a decade. Others are excited, for they somehow entered the catalog without a listen at the great Merging of Catalogs that took place in 2003. Others are terrified, for they they that there are rumors of a trimming. Or will it be a purge? Love Voodoo heard from Dandy Life who smugly heard from Creep that only a select few will remain standing at the end of harvest, that where once three songs stood, only one will remain. But Brilliant Fake heard from Death of a Party that this is just a showcase and that those who will be cut have already been marked for death. (Brilliant Fake reported that Death of a Party had pointed at the blissfully-unaware Bubbly Toes and made a hand gesture much like unto a guillotine blade falling.)

And how they have performed! From the opening wailing of the bagpipe of A A Cameron by the Queen's Own Highlanders through Deliver Me (where I was as of last Friday), it has been a panoply of sounds. Here are some themes:

(1) The best surprise songs in each letter thusfar

• A is for All Too Well by Taylor Swift. It's like I suddenly understood why every teenage girl freaking loves her. Not for the stupid singles, but for these deep cuts that sound like she is narrating their lives. (I don't think I have ever though much about her song-writing until she dropped the line "so casually cruel in the name of being honest" and I thought "I wish I had said that. And I wish someone had been casually cruel to me in the name of being honest when I was a teenager. Because then I could have freaking scrawled this on a desk in Algebra 2.")
• B is for Bronx Sniper by Mister Heavenly. Nicky Thornburn's best song by a long chalk. So stompy and aggressive. Has the same rhythms of the best Franz Ferdinand songs. And it's tight unlike his Unicorns work.
• C is for The Crush by Matt Pond PA. I bought this album on a whim at a used CD store and never really listened to it. My problem with Matt Pond PA is that they never really get above a certain tempo. Way too many of their songs are pretty boring pieces of languidity. This thing is tight and killer with not one but two guitar solos. Indie rock instead of indie chamber pop.

(2) The Smashing Pumpkins album Adore is loaded with songs that have titles between A and D. And they are all blah. I have always wondered if I have given that album short shrift. I wonder no longer. Begone Billy!

(3) Ten different versions of The Christmas Song. Ten! And it is amazing how they vary in quality. (Idina Menzel is the worst by a long shot.)

(4) There are moments when a song comes charging on and you realize you have missed it for so long. Behind the Wheel just grabbed me by the collar and shook me and said: "Do you remember when you were going to make a music video for me featuring your friend Eric and a girl driving in the rain because you were too big of a loser to actually be the one in the car with a girl? Remember that? WHERE'S MY #@$#@% VIDEO???" It then slapped me across the face. I tasted by own blood and felt alive.

(5) The great embarrassments: 

• Apparently, I really like Matchbox 20's second and third album. At least the songs with titles in the A-D range.
• I sang along to Howie Day's Collide and gave it a strong thumbs up. 
• I thumbs-downed a British Sea Power song because it was, as I have adamently refused to admit to myself, very very boring.
• I listened to a Joy School song all the way through before deleting it.