Spinoff from PJ chat thread, feels more appropriate over here. Mods feel free to delete the identical PJ chat posts.


(Liebzz is referencing the PJ20 stuff — album, book, movie, etc.)

Thinking about this…how often do any of us really go back to old albums? I often use language like this as a loose metric for speaking to an album's enduring value, but really, apart from things that are new/new to me, I can't think of many albums at all that I play more than once every 6-12 months, and that would be on the more frequent side; for many other albums, even ones I really really like, 2-5 years is probably more standard. I occasionally read people saying things like, "Three years later and I am still listening to Gigaton once a week," and I can't relate to that at all. I wonder where others fall on this spectrum. How long between listens to an album can you go before the fact that you’re not listening feels like a value judgment? Does it ever?

Follow up question — if you do have albums that you listen to once every few weeks or whatever, what are they? How do they evade fatigue in a way that other albums don’t? Are the albums with the highest replay value automatically the “greatest” ones, and what else is at play if not?

Totally agree, and not just about Gigaton, but most albums. I tend to connect with a particular album for a period of 1-3 months, listen to it frequently, and then shelve it for a while. I'll then have a renewed love affair with it anywhere from 1-3 years later for a similar period of time.

Then there's a short list of albums that get sustained, regular play in my world, and that's because they hold some special import for my household, AND because they have a certain vibe that lends itself to domestic activity without encroaching on our shared space and mood. I'm thinking of artists like JJ Cale, Allman Bros, Gillian Welch, Fleetwood Mac, Neko Case, The Beatles, and then mellower works by Radiohead, PJ Harvey, etc...If we can prepare a meal to it, have easy conversation, and clean up, then it's something becomes part of our regular soundtrack.

Again, all great questions. Albums that I cyclically listen to for a few months at a time, put them down for a few months and come back again:

Rolling Stones big 4, Pearl Jam’s first 6, Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, Full Moon Fever, Damn the Torpedoes, and Southern Accents, MMJ’s first 4 plus Circuital, and Bruce Springsteen’s The Wild The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle through Born in the USA (that’s like a 7 album run) are all examples. They just stick with me and I never really get tired of them despite many repeat listens.

I would expect an important variable here would be how much music one takes in and drilled down a bit further an album at a time.

I don't stream via Pandora/Spotify/Amazon, etc., so I expect myself to be an outlier here regardless. I have also always taken in albums as a whole, not a shuffle kinda guy.

That said, I have music playing all day. Whether it be at my work desk, in the warehouse or at home in the kitchen playing throughout the house... so basically every waking moment. And with these being practically all my selections I definitely spin a lot of albums often.

Radio reception has been pretty pour around here so I do find myself tuning in to WEHM, WFUV or WXPN in the warehouse occasionally. I also take in Eagles games via the 94WIP stream so I suppose that is some non-music time.

So far today it has been:

Rolling Stones - 12x5
Jason Isbell - Southeastern (Reissue live disc)
Elton John - Songs from the West Coast
Nine Inch Nails - Hesitation Marks

With everything but Isbell being pretty commonly queued up.

There aren’t any old albums that I consistently listen to every few weeks. For my all time favorites it’s more like every 6-12 months. What usually happens is I get a random urge to hear one and when the album hits like a ton of bricks it’s one of recreational life’s greatest joys.

I go back to old albums a lot. Like a lot. I need to re-read this thread and think about it, but on it's face, I feel like I'm the total opposite here. I'm always listening to "old" albums.

When I listen for myself, like during the workday or when on my own, I almost always listen to complete albums. I actually tend to use workdays to listen to the numerous "new" albums that I download pretty much constantly.

But at home in my downtime I tend to share that time with my wife, and because of that I have to consider music choices for us both. Those times are far more likely to be a mixture of some albums but mostly compilations or playlists. But music is the absolute constant, its always there.

I tend to fall in love with an album and listen pretty hard for a short period. Once the shine's worn off it may be a few months before I go back to it, but I always will at some stage. I actually keep a "5 Star Album" folder for digital tunes that makes it easy to refer back to when I'm looking for something to throw on without too much thought. This folder is stacked towards some older albums but every year a few more get added from the current crop. These albums are in fairly regular rotation.

Moods play a big part too. If I'm wanting to rawk I have a few specific go to's. Same with chilling. If we are on a road trip then that requires its own pre-loaded USB in the car filled with suitable albums (these invariably skew towards Aussie stuff, simply because it so often goes so well with the road stretching before us). But the point is the albums here are mostly well loved and well worn.

Then there's vinyl, of which I only have 50 or so albums. But these have almost all been purchased with the idea that they would be "suitable to play while reading". Sade's "Diamond Life" gets a run through at least monthly on that basis, as does Nick Cave's "Live at KRXP", Talk Talk's "Spirit of Eden" and Faye Webster's "I Know I'm Funny, Ha Ha".

So I think that I personally have more replay value for albums than most, but when I look at the number of albums I listen to over a year its only a very small percentage that make it to that "5 Star Albums" folder and are replayed on the reg. KD's actual question here was referencing "old" albums specifically and in general I do give them a fair lot of replay. If I love them then I tend to be drawn back to them. Funnily enough though, bar Lo2L, there is very little PJ that I listen to as part of that album rotation. I do go back to a few of the Ridley/WCT mixes when that itch needs scratching though.

It's tough because there is just so much music to get to and we only have so few years of life to do it. I think if I wasn't so invested in checking out new albums then I would have more likelihood of re-listening to just the older stuff I've loved, but to me that's like the tradie on the job site who constantly has "Generic FM" playing all day every day. Hell yeah the good songs are still good, but do you really want to be listening to just those same tunes day in and day out? So I like that variation every day - something old, something new.

Man, music is serious business.

To be clear, I regularly listen to older albums but there’s not a specific one that I consistently put on every few weeks or months.

That is really what I was getting at — how often do you find yourself going back to any one album? I realize that every album could be different; I was mainly just curious about general listening behavior. Sometimes on the Hoffman boards I’ll see these old dudes saying that they’ve listened to Exile on Main Street once a week since 1972 or whatever, and that blows my mind; there is no album in my life like that. My question stemmed from liebzz’s comment in the PJ20 thread that he doesn’t really reach for the PJ20 stuff that often, and it got me thinking, “Neither do I, but then, that describes most albums, even ones I really like.” Does that mean anything, or is that just normal listening behavior?

“Old albums” is probably also a bit of a misnomer — I really just meant any album where the initial honeymoon period is over, and it has become a book amongst the many on the shelf.

I’ll give a proper reply later but it will probably be similar to Trag’s. Appreciate everyone’s replies, I enjoy this kind of stuff.

Surely these people are full of shit.

In a lot of ways, definitely. However, it would not surprise me at all to learn that some of them have just been playing the same few classic rock albums over and over for the past 50 years.

I did listen to Exile yesterday, I myself have not been on this Earth 50 years though.

Exile is always somewhere close by, even if I don’t always listen to it.

I'm not really an album guy anymore unless its a concept album, but I once asked a similar question here about songs, and these sickos told me that they never get tired of hearing a song they like, which was the most shocking thing I've heard up until they told me that they didn't think movies are targeted to certain demographics.

Not an album but I still most frequently go back to Pearl Jam in one form or another. I don’t think 4 or 5 months could go by when I don’t at least check in for an album or two, play them on shuffle or make a couple playlists.

Same here.

Yep, me too.