Listening Habits

My listening habits are constantly changing. For most of April, I just was not in much of a mood to listen to music. I would listen to Johnny Cash in the morning, and have it on if I was doing something around the house, but never for any extended period of time. Even at work, I felt more inclined towards Sports Talk Radio than any of my standard stations. This past couple of weeks, however, music has again become a consistent thing. After spending a good couple of hours organizing my music in iTunes this past weekend, I devoured two thirds of my eMusic allocation for the month, picking up new records from Why?, sOuth and Fuck Buttons, while adding another record to my growing Destroyer collection (Streethawk: A Seduction) as well as that one Dan Bejar made with his girlfriend under the name Hello, Blue Roses. I put Why? on this morning for breakfast, and the first half sounded great.

After discovering Scott Ford Radio on Friday, I obsessively went through their forums this weekend to download Twilight Singers and Gutter Twins bootleg. I also organized my Twilight Singers collection and noticed there is one song I'm missing.

I have a growing list of albums which I can't buy on eMusic, and I hope to purchase all of these on vinyl at some point:

Sunday at the Devil Dirt, Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan
Odd Couple (double vinyl), Gnarls Barkley
The Age of the Understatement, The Last Shadow Puppets
Mudcrutch, Mudcrutch
Arm’s Way, Islands
Elephant Shell, Tokyo Police Club
Narrow Stairs, Death Cab for Cutie
Saturdays=Youth, M83
Nouns, No Age

I love music (obviously), but sometimes I just need to take a break from it and focus on something else. When it begins to feel like more of a habit of consumption than something enjoyable, I prefer to just read for a time instead. More recently, I've tried to break down my day so that nothing I do feels like an addiction over something I really want to do. When I do get in that mood of needing distance from music, there is always some reminder that pulls me back. Some reminder of why I love it so much to begin with. This past weekend, I pulled out my Steely Dan greatest hits, as well as Beck's Midnite Vultures, and those both helped remind me of why it is so important to me.