The "rewards repeated listens" thread

I'll go for Pink Floyd - Animals as well. Didn't much like it at first, now it's my favorite PF album.

 

Amon Duul II - Dance of the Lemmings :-




....needs about 25 plays to even to begin to get to grips with !

Julian Cope in his otherwise excellent book "Krautrocksampler" dismissed this album as "pedestrian ****" - no Julian you just haven't listened to it enough !!

 

I've never heard of the Beatles needing to grow on anybody, that's for sure, and in my personal experience there's been very little rock or pop that ever has; either I like it immediately or I probably never will, and, in the occasional case where I actually dislike something at first, the more I hear it the more I don't want to hear it again.

But the impressive thing is how those two records I mentioned earlier, Trout Mask Replica and Raw Power, like a good many Beatles tracks and a few other rock recordings from very long ago, still seem so fresh to me. I mean, The Beatles? With that inescapable saturation? Incredible. At least Trout Mask Replica, with it's quirky corners and unlikely melodies offers some surprises initially, so you'd expect something with that much going on to continue to engage a bit longer.

I'd like to say something here about Charlie Parker, but time's too short at the moment. I'll have to pop by again later.

 

amused to death by roger waters. now one of my most favourite albums.
pink floyd in general.
i was very young and didn't 'get' it. well not until a friend introduced me to that thing that makes you feel nice and makes you laugh a lot.
then i 'got' it!

 

One that comes to mind is what I just posted in another thread - Barnstorm by Joe Walsh. I had for 20 years before I "got it".

 

Imperial Bedroom - Elvis Costello

 

My intro to the band; I got hooked on it immediately, but I agree that numerous listens in there are still things that you uncover and really hear for the first time.

 

Elbow and The National -- their albums really do get better with repeat listenins, so much so that their new ones I automatically put them on sample repeat with that same expectation (and was not disappointed).

 

I happened to like The Dreaming the first time I heard the album.

 

I honestly don't recall if I did or not. I know the single of Sat In Your Lap was a shock when I bought it long before the album. It probably prepared me for the album, that the wilder aspects of Never for Ever were the direction she was headed in.

 

I'm not compelled urge people to give it a chance. HOWEVER, IF they are interested in that one, I'm concerned that they give it/themselves
a chance. To wit:

In the case of Trout Mask, the cd format era works against that one. The commercial imperative of an old niche-audience reissue virtually
compells the company to put the whole bloody thing on one cd. Yikes! I don't even think a pair of cd's is listenable. I've loved that thing since the days of its
original issue and it was years before I listened to more than one vinyl side at a sitting. With the advent of cd-rs, I transferred the thing to FOUR cd-r's, one per
vinyl side. I can't even imagine anybody ever initially penetrating that bloody thing as a single 80 minute program. The two times I was really invested in a friend
getting to know that one, I copied my 4-cd set for each of them. They thanked me later. Not only that. With this one exception, I never refer to the many excellent
articles and reviews of great albums. They are best left to speak for themselves. However, although I don't make a big deal of it, I DO always refer interested parties to
the excellent article on Trout Mask in the Greil Marcus edited compilation STRANDED.

 

Leonard Cohen: Songs of Love and Hate.
Marvin Gaye: Here My Dear
Death Cab for Cutie: Transatlanticism
Brad Mehldau: Largo
Fleetwood Mac: Bare Trees

 

Glad to see this one on the list. I like a lot of this band's material and finally got around to YHF and was unimprressed. Time to give a repeated listen.

Jeff Buckley's Grace is one that fits this thread as well.

 

Everything the Grateful Dead has recorded, studio, live and otherwise. (OK, maybe not some stuff on Built To Last, or some of the 80s live output, but most everything else).

 

I've loved this album from the first moment I heard it enough to put up with a wonky cassette copy that annoyingly squeaked as I listened to it.

It gets better every time I hear it. Joe'smasterpiece.

 

Van Morrison - Astral Weeks. Took me a long time to get my arms around it.

 

U2 - Achtung Baby. So different from what had come before. I didn't know what to make of it at first, but after several listenings, I grew to love it.

 

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

I never heard their first two albums, but I liked the cover(s) of Suburbs and bought it cheap some day to see what all the fuss was about. It did nothing for me. I'm still not a fan, but I really like it after repeated listens.

 

Cool thread. I like it when a thread bares my ignorance; means I got some listening to do.

Ill have to say "A Love Supreme". And probably about half of John Coltranes later period stuff. But that album I wasnt going to be defeated until I "got it". I listened and listened and picked it up and listened again. Put it down for years, figured I just wasnt going to be into that type jazz. Then I put it on and after the long break I loved it. Didnt seem complicated at all. Even simplistic at times. Weird. Love the album now.

I can only attribute my opening up to the album was due to being so bored with classic rock and stuff I had listened to for years. I pushed myself to listen to Beefheart, Jackie McCleans later work and obscure garage bands from the 60s.

A Love Supreme seemed easy then. The Heavy Weight Champion boxset use to literally scare me. Now I think its as easy as CSN to listen to. Weird.