Shearwater: JP&O

Douglas Call Tuesday, April 12, 2016 7:45 AM

I think you would like the new Shearwater song Quiet Americans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr2pdwhjtjU

It sounds like a late 80s/early 90s Depeche Mode track

Josh Sorensen Tuesday, April 12, 2016 1:49 PM

and, yeah! this song is cool!

I never would've said this was Shearwater

Josh Sorensen Tuesday, April 12, 2016 1:57 PM

Wow, this song is amazing.

third time through. It definitely sounds like a throwback to the past, but done so well.

so that it stands alone

Josh Sorensen Tuesday, April 12, 2016 1:59 PM

it's totally a winner.

Josh Sorensen Tuesday, April 12, 2016 2:15 PM

Listening to "Backchannels" now. I love this.

Josh Sorensen Tuesday, April 12, 2016 2:23 PM

man, this Backchannels is a haunting song. I can't stop listening.

Josh Sorensen Tuesday, April 12, 2016 2:36 PM

I've got my friend Mike listening to Quiet Americans and Backchannels on repeat.2:36 PM

you've touched two lives today.

Josh Sorensen Wednesday, April 13, 2016 9:14 AM

I started my day with Shearwater "Backchannels" on repeat

Josh Sorensen Wednesday, April 13, 2016 9:16 AM

I love the lyric: "put down the knife, The night is here.
But still is spinning out stars in its wake." Dang. so beautiful. And his voice is so weary.

I can't get enough Quiet Americans and Backchannels.

Josh Sorensen Thursday, April 14, 2016 11:49 AM

You're right, “Whither the Americans?!” is a great thing to shout.

Josh Sorensen  Wednesday, May 18, 2016 12:16 PM

btw, the last half of Jet Plane and Oxbow was my main entertainment last weekend.

Josh Sorensen  Wednesday, May 18, 2016 12:17 PM

I find Stray Lights fascinating. It's a great album ender.

The only track I don't love is Wildlife in America.

Josh Sorensen  Wednesday, May 18, 2016 12:18 PM

it'd be hard to follow Pale Kinds.

laugh, kings

Josh Sorensen  Wednesday, May 18, 2016 12:21 PM

I should probably save this for the blog, but sometimes when I'm listening to JP&O I feel like I'm listening to Mike and the Mechanics.  The weird thing is I don't even know Mike and the Mechanics beyond their radio singles. one night a week ago or so I went down this strange rabbit hole wondering how the end of the 80's would've looked to Mike and the Mechanics. The onslaught of grunge and rap and r&b. I wonder what the view was like from their seats.

Josh Sorensen  Wednesday, May 18, 2016 12:19 PM

man, we haven't agreed on an album in years.

Since, what, War on Drugs?

Doug's A-Z Listening Experience: Surprise Song Follow-Up

Unlike so many of my goals in life, the A-Z Listening Experience is still going strong. I just plowed into the Is which gives me the chance to give an update on the Surprise Songs from D-H. (Remember, these are songs that I have in my catalog that I have no memory of hearing in the past. So, they cannot be songs where I say: "Oh YEAH! This song is so great!" They have to be total surprises.)

D is for Diggin' Up the Heart by Brandon Flowers. (Disconnecty by Grandaddy was a close second.)

This is off the album that he released last year that a lot of people liked but that I never listened to except in the car with Christina and the kids and even then, the kids kept requesting certain songs. So, I never caught this one and I like it better than anything else on the album because it's a Brandon Flowers Nevada song. The best thing to me about Brandon Flowers is that he continues to write about Las Vegas and, when the characters aren't in Vegas, they are somewhere out in small-town Nevada. When kids from the Sun Belt listen to his stuff, they don't have to try and imagine themselves in New York, the docks, or the Midwest. In this song, it's about a guy who is in prison out in the desert where he can smell the sagebrush when he is out in the yard. Sure, the story in the song could have been about a kid in the Midwest, but because Flowers specifically marks the location in the song (the desert, the girl in the song being Humboldt County queen), it evokes driving through Winnemucca (county seat of Humboldt County) on I-80, coloring the whole song with memories of vast blue skies, blistering heat, sagebrush, and utter emptiness. 

E is for Execution of All Things by Rilo Kiley. 

I have always liked the sound of Rilo Kiley, but there is something in the way that Jenny Lewis swears that is incredibly ugly to me. It seems that in the first few tracks of this album that there were enough of Jenny Lewis swearing to deter me from the whole thing. (Personal preference, of course. Other people might find the way she swears cute or endearing or empowering. I find it ugly. That's the only way I can describe it.) So, I never got to this song which is a great angry song about havoc being rained down on the head of an ex. (This explanation doesn't make sense because this is track three. Whatever.) This is really the apex of Rilo Kiley for me because I like the sound of this album (previous album was kind of boring, next album because really slick) and it isn't marred by the ugly swears. (I can't write this in any less prudish way. Sorry, man.)

F is for Flake by *shudder* Jack Johnson.

That is the most difficult sentence I have ever had to write. I cannot stand anything else I have ever heard by Jack Johnson. I cannot stand his vibe, his voice, his lyrics, everything he stands for. (Laid back dude on the beach with an acoustic guitar who strums idiotic ditties without a shirt but with a shell necklace and all the girls think he is so deep and so talented.) If someone asks me what music I like, part of the description is "...and I cannot stand Jack Johnson." And yet, here I am, completely besotted by Flake. I was shocked that when it first started playing, that I didn't give it an immediate thumbs down like all his other songs. But the songs evolves into something much more interesting and cool by the end and I could not get it out of my head. I spent the rest of the Fs hoping that something else would come along to knock it out of first place. I kept relistening to it, hoping that I was mistaken. Instead, each relisten further confirmed a most inconvenient truth: I liked a Jack Johnson. (Even worse, according to one of my beach bum friends, this was a popular Jack Johnson song back in the day.)

G is for Good Old Days by the Lodger. (Close runner-up: Generate by Collective Soul. Seriously.)

It's a very simple peppy British song. Nothing much to it. Which makes it almost a perfect song. It's like a Whoville Christmas after the Grinch stole it, without all the trimmings and trappings and roast beasts.

H is for Heartbeats by Jose Gonzalez. (Close runner-up: He Seng by Carsick Cars.)

Jose Gonzalez is one of those soft acoustic men from the early 2000s that people recommended to me and when I listened to their albums and thought they sounded same-y. No idea how we go this particular song (it must have been popular because we also have a version of the song that is sung by some chorus), but divorced from the rest of the album, it really shines. 

The lack of Republican Rock

You know I think (likely erroneously) that I am as middle-of the-road as possible when it comes to my politics. I like to think that I am the swing voter that every politician cherishes. Because I think I am middle-of-the-road, I like it when there are viable candidates from both parties, when it seems like both parties are getting their message out there. So, the following is not my endorsement but an attempt to figure out why one side kills it in the political music department and the other is so so terrible.

Fact: Payola by the Desaparecidos is a great album.

Fact: It's also a very political album.

Possible Fact: Conor Oberst when interviewed about the album said something to the effect of "if you only have three minutes to say something, you have to be direct." (Even if this isn't a fact, pretend it is because it makes my point.)

Payola touches on a bunch of different policy areas: immigration, health care, foreign policy, Wall Street are the ones that come to mind but I am sure that there are others. And while Payola is a completely political album (Muse's Drones is another political album from 2015), a number of indie bands at least write political songs.

Fact: All of these songs are from some the same ideological perspective. (I would guess that any political hip hop songs are also going to be from a similar ideological perspective, but I do not listen to hip hop so I can't say for certain.)

Fact: Republicans are so loathed by rock bands (mainstream and indie) that not only can Republicans not get bands to play at their rallies, they can't even get approval from a band to play a recording at their rallies (unless it's Ted Nugent).

Pretty sure a fact but not wanting to look it up: Republicans have anemic support among young voters.

Why? Democrats do a great job in presenting what's wrong with the country and what needs to be fixed. You listen to any of those tracks and Payola and you say, "Yeah! That's a real problem! A guy dying from lack of health care! Immigrant families being treated inhumanely! Wall Street bros getting golden parachutes while the common man is underwater! We need to fix it!" (Note that the messaging is heavy on problems, light on solutions.)

What do mainstream conservatives give you as problems? Over-regulation of small business, activist judges, too much government spending, not enough guns. Try stoking the fires of political activism with that. Try writing a song that will change the minds of others about those issues.

Of course, then you have the Donald Trump branch of conservatism with messages of xenophobia and racism. Much pithier but deplorable messages that if you are a mainstream Republican, you really don't want to see put into a catchy three minute song.

The issue with conservative messaging is that it focuses on the wrong problems. Small business regulation is a boring issue. Declining life expectancy in the Midwest? That's an issue. Opiod addiction? Great issue. Increasing rates of nonmarital births? Oh boy. Declining labor force participation? Bingo. And those topics would be fertile territory for songwriters.

So, let's say I am a Republican candidate and I decide to shift my message to "America has problems. And the problems are with substance abuse and disability and no jobs and suicide" who is the band that I ask to play at my rally? Some country band who sings about patriotism? Not on your life.

Give me...The Offspring.

*Josh clutches his pearls and asks for his smelling salts*

Yes, because amidst the sea of vapid songs, they have a couple that nail the problems that should be the heart of conservative messaging:

(1) Hit That: It's about teen pregnancy, sexual and material irresponsibility, and a condemnation of the hook up culture.



(2) The Kids Aren't All Alright: All the kids on a street grow up and their lives are broken. Drop outs, nonmarital births, drug abuse, suicide.



So, yeah, change the messaging so that it can be articulated in a three-minute rock song. Bring in the Offspring, get them to play for the rally. Bus in some straight edgers. (If you think this is all too 1990s, uh, let me remind you that Dave Matthews just played a Bernie Sanders rally. At least the Offspring have hit singles in the last ten years.) Get other bands on board. Create a Republican music scene.

Because, only then, will we achieve what I think would be the most important step forward in American politics:

Election Eve.
Live.
Battle of the Bands: Democrats vs. Republicans.

Such is my hope, such is my prayer.

Shearwater: The Importance of Removing a Thor from Your Side or Designing Play Names for Tim Tebow

Upfront disclosure: This review will be biased.

Unlike you, I don't send emails/write handwritten notes to bands that I like. I have done it twice. One was a completely unfair request for the Mountain Goats to come back to Salt Lake City something like three months after they played there because I had just discovered the Sunset Tree and I really wanted to see it played live. 

The other time was when I wrote Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater. I was really into the Winged Life album and the Thieves EP (side note: I just hit I Can't Wait on my A-Z Listening Experience and I had the same experience that I had when I first heard it 11 years ago: This guy's voice is incredible), so I was exploring their website and they had a demo up for a song called Turn Your Transmitters Off. I loved the song, but I couldn't understand all the lyrics at one point in the song, so I sent an email to Jonathan Meiburg asking him: "On Turn Your Transmitters Off, what is the missing word in the phrase 'It was a ______ disaster'?" He responded quickly: "It's 'f@#$#$%', I'm afraid." I was impressed that he responded AND that that his response was so gentlemanly. (Side note: Turn Your Transmitters Off became Red Sea, Black Sea on Palo Santo, but *music snob alert* I still prefer the demo.) 

Since that time, I have been all aboard the Jonathan Meiburg/Shearwater train. I have become more and more convinced that Meiburg sharpened Will Sheff's genius and that his leaving Okkervil River in 2008 to focus on Shearwater full-time was a crippling blow to Okkervil River (I don't think that Sheff's fit of nostalgic solipsism that was The Silver Gymnasium [their worst album] happens if Meiburg is still in the band because then Sheff doesn't view himself as the undisputed leader of OR).

One nagging thing I have felt about Shearwater since they became a fully-realized band and not an Okkervil side project is that although their albums were at various times brilliant, they also had some languid moments. (I am talking about the island trilogy of Palo Santo, Rooks, and the Golden Archipelego). Sometimes I felt like that was just part of the band's MO, the quiet, the slow tempos, sometimes breaking out in rampages but many times there was barely anything there. Each of the albums, though, had one really solid loud, fast-tempo song and I always wondered whether there was friction within the band, if someone wanted to go harder and faster and someone wanted to go slower. I read one time that the drummer, named Thor, was a believer in minimalist drumming.

Thor left the band after the Island Trilogy.

The next album, Animal Life, was ferocious. And it was also amazing. There are still some quiet moments, but nothing as torpid as on previous albums.

Which means I was beyond excited for Jet Plane and Oxbow. And, at first, I thought Meiburg had blown it.

Why? Electronics. The album begins with Prime and Prime begins with some synth arpeggios. And that synth stays throughout the song, although ultimately buried in drums and guitar. And then Quiet Americans starts up and it sounds like the beginning of a really great industrial track. Great sound, but not really a classic Shearwater sound. A Long Time Away gets off great, but because I already have the electronic concern in my head, I am much more aware of the little descending synth line that appears throughout the song. And this obsession just grows so that I stop paying attention to the songs and just keep thinking: "Why are they ruining their great sound?"

And then Pale Kings bursts forth and it's just a complete and total Shearwater track in the veins of You As You Were. It's driving, it's radiant, it's upbeat, it is thrilling, it is Shearwater at their finest. And I felt like it's this beautiful gesture from Meiburg saying, "If you were distracted by the electronics, here's this non-electronic gem. The songs, the lyrics, the sounds, they are all still there. Now go back and listen to those first five tracks and realize that the electronics don't factor into them nearly as much as you thought they did." And I went back and listened to those first five tracks with Pale Kings as my reference and absolutely loved them.

But the other surprising thing about the album is that Pale Kings not only unlocks the key to understanding the first five tracks but it also leads you into the spectacular second half that is much more of the Animal Joy sound. (And, in the case of Radio Silence, sounds like a prime British Sea Power cut from the Do You Like Rock Music? era. That guitar line that rips through the song, the call of "disarray", followed by the imploring "I need it I need I need it" is so BSP.)

Now, let's answer the questions:

How many football plays for Tim Tebow can you make from derivations of the title of the album?
(1) Jet Plane and Tebow: Zone read for Tebow with a really fast halfback as the option.
(2) JetBow and Oxplane: Sprint out for Tebow with a fullback in the flat as a safety valve
(3) TePlane and Oxbow: Goal line play, O line forms an oxbow, Tebow makes like a plane and flies over the line into the end zone
(4) Jet Plane Te "is a freaking ox"Bow: Short yardage, shotgun play, Tebow makes like a fullback and plows ahead like an ox.
The answer is 4 plays.

Which song title do I always get wrong in my head? Pale Kings. Every time I think of the name of the song, I think it is called White Knights. Meiburg's title is better.

Which song could be played during the credits of a Jerry Lewis movie to help people feel forget that the movie had no real ending?
None. But maybe, if you translated Stray Light at Clouds Hill into French, it could work some magic.

Which song should you not play during the credits of a Jerry Lewis movie because it would further the ennui of the patrons?
That would be Long Time Away. "I just watched 90 minutes of a movie about a sad clown without an ending? And now there is a song telling me that I have been a long time away from my life where anything would have been better than suffering through this?" *spiking ennui levels*

Let's say you are in line for a concert at the 9:30 Club and in a flash of an eye, you are caught in a snob-off about this album with a bearded doughy fellow. What's the winning criticism?
"Electronics" is too obvious, and it's likely the shiv that beardo has brought to the fight. You gotta go with track sequencing. "I mean, it's a brilliant album, but Pale Kings is such a rush that you have to put a really quality track right after it. And Only Child just starts off so small that it just kills some of the momentum of the album. Glass Bones should be track 7." Beardo hasn't considered it. You just pulled a Marion-drinking-game-in-Tibet move. Collect your winnings. (I think some metaphors got mixed in there...)

Grade: A+

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.

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.  

......

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.