albums i listened to all the way through
posted this week and every week (6)
*For the week of March 2nd-March 8th, 2025*
Wow. Six weeks?
I’m going to take a moment to reflect on the fact that my playlist listening sensibility is fading away at a rapid rate. I’ll admit it: I love listening to full albums. It’s actually quite addictive. The last couple of weeks have felt oddly positive and overwhelming in a way I can only describe as “cohesive.” My music life is starting to feel cohesive, rather than disoriented and scatter-brained.
The familiar lessons are beginning to lodge themselves deep into my brain.
Great albums possess entire worlds. Order is important. Context means more than it ever did before.
In the summer of 2020, I spent a lot of time by myself, driving the backroads around my hometown. It felt like the only way to get out of the house safely. Phoebe Bridgers released Punisher, and I found myself listening to that album in its entirety on repeat. I know it better than I know members of my own family. It encapsulates so much of what I was feeling at twenty-two, stuck living with my parents during a global pandemic and working in a clinic where I collected pee samples from masked patients at a six feet distance.
I must have listened to that album a hundred times. I was so stuck on it. It was a little like everyone was stuck in jello, not frozen, exactly, but unable to move. I look back on photos and videos from that time and hardly recognize myself. My acne was the worst it’s ever been. I watched a ridiculous amount of Hallmark movies and reality television, as well as CNN. The only true bright spot was having an adorable gray-and-white kitten named Basil drop into my lap.
After that summer, I returned to my furious playlist making and listening. I was desperate to move on from the strangeness of the lockdowns. I wanted to reclaim whatever was lost to my generation—graduations, proper socialization, dating, living alone.
It’s only recently I’ve come to understand what was stolen. It’s only recently I’ve tried to rebuild those lost years, brick by brick. It’s only recently I became an full-blown album listener, actually taking the time to listen to entire works of art as they were intended. My life has taken on a slower pace, which is ironic, considering I live in the city that never sleeps.
I’ve enjoyed allowing my listening habits to catch up with my ever-developing adult-ness. There is something deeply healing about listening to a record while you make dinner alone on a Friday night.
I’m not sure I could have explained that to my younger self. That old adage about experience versus telling makes more sense the older I get. I am still young, but for the first time in my life, I feel older. I feel somewhat wiser. With that wisdom, comes the knowledge that albums are important artistic touchstones with so much thought, intention, and consideration behind them.
At the Dead Gowns show this past week, Genevieve remarked that this newest album took five years to make, in part, because the pandemic disrupted their initial recording sessions in early 2020. It took them five years to make an album.
I thought to myself, “Wait, that was five years ago?”
Yes. It was. It’s been five years since I was a kid. It’s been five years, and in that time, I’ve moved three times, earned a graduate degree, and held ten jobs. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. I’ve lived through what felt like extreme emotional turmoil and come out on the other side thinking, “Huh. Maybe it wasn’t actually that bad.” Half a decade later, and I’m finally an adult, cooking meals full of nutrition and tracking my spending habits in a spreadsheet.
Five years to make an album? That level of effort deserves infinite listens.
Thanks to the encouragement and posts from Substackers like Thomas Morra, Kevin Alexander, and Vinyl Therapist, I challenged myself to listen to more full-length albums this year, starting with Lily Seabird’s Alas, and Abundance from Sister.
Since those initial listening sessions, I find myself gravitating towards albums and letting my playlists lay dormant. I also recognize how easy it will be to finally let the Spotify nostalgia go in exchange for more intentional, considered listening on Bandcamp and physical media.
Here are the albums I listened to all the way through this past week:
Yuck (2011) by Yuck~X
Abundance (2023) by Sister.**X
It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded by Snow (2025) by Dead Gowns**X
Dumb Poet (1987) by Immaculate FoolsX
HEY WHAT (2021) by Low~
Sling (2021) by Clairo~ (Easily my favorite Clairo album. Really ashamed it took me this long to listen to it in full.)
Oh, and the original adage…
“I hear and I forget… I see and I remember… I do and I understand.”
~Confucius
I suppose Gen X was the end of an era in which we expected albums, in which we would hear a single on commercial radio or a deep cut on college radio, or see a video on MTV, and buy the CD or record or cassette tape. I'm not sure about others in my cohort, but I never changed in that expectation, and the "new" artists I discover today tend to be the ones who put out great records, front to back. It's fascinating, and heartening, to read about you recapturing that feeling--the slowness--of immersing yourself in the listen.