No-Skip Albums

I apologize for the formatting of this post.  I started in Word and the pasted in Blogger and tried to make corrections.  

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I’ve been thinking lately about why I feel like I’ve been listening to the same things over and over.  Mind you—it's good stuff, but it does seem repetitive.  I think I’ve got it figured out.  But it’s kind of a long story.

It all began on a snowy Utah Christmas Day back in 2015.  My wife gave me a set of headphones for Christmas.  Now these headphones were great and I was really surprised and super pumped to receive them.  However, there were on-ear headphones and apparently I have super sensitive ears because by the end of the day, my ears were sore.  I knew that I would need to return them and get a pair of over the ear headphones.  So, after about a week of agonizing over choices I finally settled on a different pair.  I’m very pleased with these headphones.  However, one of the features missing on this set of cans is inline control.  I was somewhat concerned about not having this feature but sound quality takes all and I tried to max out sound quality for my price range. 

One thing you probably know about my wife and me—we have a deal: she cooks dinner, I clean up.  I have no problem with this deal because she’s a fantastic cook and I love to eat good food.  However, we don’t have a dishwasher, so I’m guessing it takes me a bit longer than the average American to clean up dinner. I really don’t mind this, though, because somedays the only time I have to seriously listen to music is when I do the dishes after dinner so I don’t mind an extra 15-30 minutes.

So, getting back to the lack of inline control, since I got the new headphones I’ve been choosing albums that I know I like every song on the album to listen to so I don’t have to dry my hands off to pull my phone out of my pocket to skip the song.  (I’m not a playlist listener.). I’ve been choosing my safest, most complete top-to-bottom albums.  I’ve been listening to many of the same albums because I didn’t realize what I was doing.  But now I’m aware of what I’m doing it’s got me thinking: what are my favorite albums that I love every song?  This may seem kind of redundant to “What are my favorite albums?” but I think it’s different.  Maybe it’s not different for everyone.  For me, I think there are albums that are so incredibly well crafted that I don’t believe there is a single weakness (e.g. War on Drugs Lost in the Dream, Radiohead Kid A) but there may be songs I don’t necessarily “like;” they are albums I tend to devote a more careful or intentional listen to.  So, maybe for most people, there isn’t a difference in what I’m saying, but for the sake of this post I’m asking: What are your best no-skip albums? These are albums that may not be best of the best but they have NO SKIPS, no regrets, no fear of letting the album run through to the end without having to cringe at least a little bit.

This is what I’ve come up with so far:

·       The National

o   Alligator

o   Boxer

·         Weezer—The Blue Album

·         The Features—Exhibit A

·         Cake—Fashion Nugget

·         The Thermals—F’n A (edited for your sake)

·         AMFM

o   Getting into Sinking

o   Mutilate Us

·         The Beatles

o   The White Album*

o   Sgt. Pepper

·         Mates of State—Bring it Back

·         The Shins—Chutes Too Narrow

·         Vampire Weekend

o   Vampire Weekend

o   Contra

o   Modern Vampires of the City

·         Pavement—Crooked Rain

·         The Killers—Hot Fuss

·         Bright Eyes—I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning

·         Neutral Milk Hotel—Aeroplane*

·         Spoon

      Kill the Moonlight
      A Series of Sneaks

·         James—Laid

·         REM

o   Green

o   New Adventures in Hi-Fi

·         Possum Dixon—Possum Dixon

·         Unicorns—Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?

·         Islands—Return to the Sea

·         Jane’s Addiction—Ritual de lo Habitual

·         Smashing Pumpkins—Siamese Dream

·         War on Drugs—Lost in the Dream*

·         Boat—Setting the Paces

·         The Cure—Disintegration*

·         LCD Soundsystem—Sounds of Silver

·         Okkervil River—The Stage Names

·         The Mountain Goats—The Sunset Tree

·         The White Stripes—De Stijl

·         Depeche Mode—Violator*

·         Violent Femmes

o   Violent Femmes

o   3

o   Why Do Birds Sing?

·         The Vaccines—What Did You Expect From The Vaccines

·         Radiohead—Kid A*

·         The Long Winters—When I Pretend to Fall

·         The Boat People—Dear Darkly

·         Wilco—Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

·         Flaming Lips—Yoshimi

·         The Walkmen—Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone*

*Because I’m still not positive I can separate my “Best of” list from   my “No Skips” list, I’m including some “Best of” albums here    that I don’t usually listen to casually.  They are indicated with the  asterisk.

That’s a pretty good handful of albums.  And it was helpful to me to list them all out like that so I can see what I’m dealing with.  I have given myself a much broader list of no-skip albums to work with.  And I can definitely say that some of my all-time favorite albums are on this list, but not every album on this list is an all-time fav.  Cake, Mates of State, The Vaccines, James, The Features?  Entertaining, but not all-time greats.  However, I wouldn’t hesitate to put on their album and let it run through without having to worry about skipping.