An album a day in May

A few days ago I had a realization: I hadn't sat down and really listened to an album for awhile. Oh, I've heard plenty of albums recently – especially considering the average workday under pandemic lockdown – but it had been awhile since I'd listened to one. You know, a full-body immersion. I was gripped with an urge, a longing, to sit down and do nothing but listen to an album, from front to back. The last time I'd done it, I reckoned, must've been on my last airplane flight – which, again considering the circumstances, was obviously too long ago.

The idea of this, this simple proposal, animated me with excitement. It's a special adventure to meet an album face to face, opening yourself completely to it while you close yourself, momentarily, to all else. To accede yourself to the artist's terms and loosen the imagination. You'll perhaps contend with confusion, frustration, even boredom or want, but you embrace those reactions as they come. And, in the best of circumstances, you'll hear something you've never heard before, no matter how many times you've listened to it prior.

The desire had taken hold. That night, I resolved that instead of my usual bedtime (lockdown) routine of reading before sleep, I'd listen to an album from start to finish. This exercise would be done via headphones on my phone. On my phone, there are three primary mediums of music-listening: the Spotify app, the Bandcamp app, and iPhone's native Music app. Each has its purpose: Spotify for convenience & crowd-pleasers; Bandcamp for browsing a broad variety; Music for a stable of time-tested go-tos. There are reasons for this arrangement, some rational, some less so, which I'll not delve into here. After some touch-screen noodling, I posited to myself that the occasion demanded a selection from the latter category of tunes (time-tested go-tos), and made my choice: Public Strain by Women.

As is the case with music-lovers, or perhaps any art-lover, the superfan is often seized with an urge to publicly express their appreciation; to repackage the art somehow and spread its gospel to anyone in their circles who will listen (see: a million zillion fan-created Spotify playlists). Lying there listening to Public Strain, an album I've loved for what's apparently now a decade (it was released in 2010), and by no means excepted from such impulses, I pondered how I might share its greatness. "What if I wrote a blog post about how much I love this album?" I thought, a thought not dissimilar from one I might've had a decade prior when it was released. Ah, memories: the joys and follies of the blogs of yesteryear. The idea had legs, but lacked purpose.

Anyway, the thoughts bounced around my head a bit, and arrived at a bold challenge: write a blurb about an album -- maybe one I loved, but really any album – once a day throughout the month of May. Part catchy jingle ("an album a day in May!"), part opportunistic lockdown sanity-saver, it would no matter how I sliced it be a significant undertaking. I haven't exactly been prolific in my writing output, but so much of writing is finding a starting point – and the rest is just writing about what you know, right?

So here goes: every day in May, I'll write something about an album. Some might be among the "time-tested" favorites; some might be random oddballs I've hardly listened to. But all occupy some place of significance or notability in my world. The only strict rule I'll hold myself to is that I won't write about more than one album by a single artist. If all goes well, maybe the reader will find something that will enter their own world to take up some place of "significance or notability". And at worst, I'll have something to reference a decade from now, when I find myself listening to Public Strain during the latest pandemic and decide to write a blog post about it.