That New Album Smell

 Music streaming services really are one of the wonders of the 21st century. At any time I can access 70s prog, 80s house music, or old sea shanties if I want to. It has allowed me to explore all kinds of new musical horizons without having to worry about blowing money on an album I might end up not liking.

At the same time, streaming has robbed me of certain musical listening practices that I miss. One of the biggest is that feeling of brining home a new, hotly anticipated album from the record store. I used to love that moment when I finally freed such CDs from their cellophane fetters, pealed off that stupid sticker on top, and could finally hear what I had been waiting months to listen to. 

Last week I saw that Big Thief was putting out a new album, and while I streamed it, I listened to it front to back in one sitting, absorbing the music with intention. It was a reminder that even doing this over streaming is a worthwhile endeavor. In honor of that experience, here's five times I got taken in by the new album smell.

REM, Automatic for the People

Out of Time was my first REM album, and I listened to it incessantly back in '91. I then spent the next year buying up the band's entire back catalog. When Automatic came out I bought it on CD as fast as I could. "Drive" had already been released as a single, and its dark tone intrigued me. This was not "Shiny Happy People." "Drive" started the album off, so that was familiar enough. After that came "Try Not To Breathe," and I knew at that very moment that this would be a great album. (It's still one of my fave REM deep cuts.) I had been skeptical that the band could follow up their hit record only a year later, and finding out they could surpass it was one of the great surprises of my life.

Nirvana, In Utero

Like a lot of people my age, Nirvana's Nevermind had been a touchstone. Not only a great record, it was a symbol of a changing world where the fatuous jock bullshit of hair metal would be destroyed in favor of edgy music by the ugly people. My people. The recording of In Utero got all kinds of press, so I was not sure what to expect. Like REM, it ended up being better in my eyes than what came before. Right from the beginning "Serve the Servants" just blasted things off. Nevermind had been produced in a way that made it glossy, this album would be gritty and I loved it for that. 

U2, Pop

I know it's super uncool to admit this these days, but back in the 90s I adored U2. It didn't hurt that a woman I was in love with in college did too. In 1997 they put out their first album in four years, so anticipated that record stores had midnight sales of it. I was one of those people who queued up in the dead of night to buy it on CD. This instantly became an album disliked by U2 fans. Within a year you'd see it in the racks at all the used CD stores. This is a record I will actually defend to my dying day. It uses the au courrant electronica sounds of the day (which I was digging) while mining deep emotional themes. It's also the last time Edge really got wild on the guitar. Don't believe me? Listen to "Gone."

Radiohead, Kid A

OK Computer dominated my life for a year after its release. I began every day with the somber sounds of "Airbag." There just didn't seem to be any other album capable of articulating what Tricky called the "pre-millennial tension." I was in grad school by the time of Kid A, and on the day of release marched into the sadly departed Record Service in Champaign, Illinois, to buy it. The title and cover puzzled me, but when the first organ notes of "Everything in its Right Place" hit I realized I was heading somewhere special. My love of OK Computer instantly evaporated. Something new and far more unsettling had been created. 

Wilco, A Ghost Is Born

You think you outgrow the idea of a band mattering to your identity, but that didn't happen to me. As a man in my late twenties I was still capable of wrapping up my personality with my favorite musicians. Back then the only band that mattered to me was Wilco. Living in Champaign-Urbana I got many chances to see them live. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot had blown me away and I did not know if the band could top it. A Ghost is Born doesn't, really, but it had plenty of songs that felt completely valid to me.