Slow burners: 10 masterpiece albums that require repeated listens
It’s a universal truth that good things comes to those who wait and that all the best things in life are an acquired taste. How can you truly appreciate the triumph of a last-minute winner without first sitting through a slew of tedious draws? To reach the wondrous relief of a cathartic cold beer after a hard day at work, you must first gag your way through warm cans as a brave-faced teenager. And I refute that anyone enjoyed their first delicious olive. The same can be said for the world of music—not every masterpiece knocks your socks off from the first listen.
These slow-burning displays of brilliance are the bane of a reviewer’s workload. And they are the gift that keeps on giving in your record collection. Often the LPs that require repeat listens are the ones that survive the test of time the best. They see us delving back in time and time again. In a way, this phenomenon makes perfect sense. If you have to wade into them tentatively, then the implication is that there is more depth. Is obfuscated beauty ultimately not more captivating than a quick lusty flash?
Below we have curated a list of masterpieces that might have passed you by the first time. The beauty of such an exercise is that if you disagree, then it may well be possible that you simply haven’t given the album a chance to show its true colours.
From the weirdness of Tom Waits to the perturbing surface of the Pixies, these albums just need some time to grow on you. It’s in your best interest to allow that to happen.
10 albums that require repeated listens:
Surfer Rosa – Pixies
Sam Fogarino of Interpol once opined that the Pixies have been the most influential band in music since they first emerged back in 1988 with their debut album, Surfer Rosa. Recalling the first time he heard their music, he said: “I felt vile, then I felt violated, then I thought it was the most brilliant fucking thing since sliced bread, and that hasn’t changed because it’s ageless music, and that’s a very rare thing to stumble upon.”
Fogarino’s account is textbook slow-burning appraisal. The Pixies have always been somewhat of an oddity. They somehow exhibit a dichotomous mix of perturbing sounds and iconography akin to the world of death metal breaking bread with the harmonic sensibilities of the Bee Gees. David Bowie aptly surmised this mishmash as sounding like a “psychotic Beatles”. It’s a jarring mix that proves joyously untempered on their debut. You just have to overcome the vile introduction before you can relish the pig thrashing in a plashy mire reverie of its sultry lair.
Humbug – Arctic Monkeys
After two smash hit records, the hype simply had to be believed. Then it happened. The ugly disaster of Humbug. Young fans en masse asked themselves: ‘What is this horrible druggy mess, and how can we live with the disappointment?’ The Rome of collective youths lay in ruin as the Sheffield scallies grew their hair and bloody experimented. Then slowly, partly through apathy, partly through curiosity, many would revisit the record, ‘was it really as bad as I thought when I flung the CD out of my mum’s car window’ they’d ponder before hitting play after a year-long pause. And there it was…
Alex Turner once said, “There is always that one band that comes along when you are 14 or 15 years old that manages to hit you in just the right way and changes your whole perception on things.” As it happens, there is an undeniable third act too. It arrives as a curious diegesis on what you thought was a straight road to adulthood. Things take a turn and offer up a leftfield future with a wider vista than the narrow realm of fancies you had previously prescribed your ego.
The bewitching blast of their debut might’ve hurled a cold splash of water upon the fresh face of childhood, but the perturbing come-hither of the masterful Humbug was the drawn-out moment many realised that there was more to art than dancefloor-filling bangers. True to its name, Humbug might have an unyielding surface, but if you suck it and see, there is a sweet reward waiting.
Boxer – The National
You could argue that The National were a slow-burning band in general. Boxer was their fourth outing and the first to gain any major traction, but even that came after a touch of revving wheel spin. Looking back now, it’s hard to see why that was ever the case. However, at the time, amid the indie age of skinny jeans and straightened fringes, the music of sad dads simply took a lot of adjusting to.
While Alligator was a brilliant third outing for the band, the pressure was still on with Boxer to avoid the ash heap of history in the midst of a competitive alternative era. In truth, their lack of success up to this point may well have helped as they seemed to slink back to the far end of the bar and relish the lure of the shadows. Their brooding album happily shuns the spotlight and offers up stunning musicology that is sombrely understated. The perfect paradigm for this comes from Bryan Devendorf’s drumming, which mystically leads from behind with sheer melodic complexity, baiting mellowed minds with sullen introspection like a picnic to an ant.
Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone – The Walkmen
Speaking of building brooding atmospheres and billowing drum rhythms, bands don’t uphold those indie tenets any better than The Walkmen. From the get-go, Hamilton Leithauser growled with brazen individualism. If you wade through the whirling welter of their sound, you find a lot of jazz amid the maelstrom musicology, but one vital force that makes them so stunningly singular is that they really rattle their way towards the exultancy of good old rock ‘n’ roll while they experiment with ragged melodies.
This mix is a potent force that makes Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone a beast that many may have avoided in favour of their more single-heavy follow-up. Masterful tracks like ‘We’ve Been Had’ hinted at their potential to fill dancefloors with ‘The Rat’ in the years to come, but elsewhere the rest of the debut is a ponderous world happy to deal in intricacy that the radio often overlooks. An LP in the truest sense, this gem is supposed to be listened to front to back to embalm you in the full effect of its modern life mire.
On All Fours – Goat Girl
When we recently spoke to Fontaines D.C., Conor Curley proudly proclaimed, “I love that album On All Fours,” he said of Goat Girl’s 2021 swirling wave of genre-blending brilliance featuring soaring tunes like ‘Sad Cowboy’. “I listened to it when it came out, but since then, I’ve got so much more into it. I feel like it’s made sense to me more, I feel like I’ve gotten to the place where I understand it more. It’s amazing man.”
In truth, it is an album that you have to meet halfway. Unlike some of the records on this list, it’s not a mystery as to why it takes some time to ensnare you—the album is happily obtuse, throwing in a kitchen sink of sounds and styles into the studio. But beneath it all, the MSG that’ll have you darkening its door until it suddenly welcomes you in is the anthemic aura it holds. On All Fours is a mountain of artistry just waiting for you to scale it.
Return to Cookie Mountain – TV On the Radio
Return to Cookie Mountain comes roaring to the door like an excitable golden retriever. To begin with, it proves so manic that you might have to lock it away for a moment so that it settles down. Rarely does an album begin with the same level of discordance as the opener ‘I Was a Lover’, and that can prove overwhelming before you even truly begin.
However, in time, the drip-feed of moments where everything aligns and harmony breaks out from the urban rubble is a beautiful thing to behold. The Brooklyn-based band are first-rate musicians, and Dave Sitek is one of the finest producers around. This pedigree means that triumphant melodic synchronicity and edgy experimentation can be mixed seamlessly to make a record that might not be the most pleasant in your collection, but it will certainly be up there among the most musically interesting.
Swordfishtrombones – Tom Waits
A lot goes on in the weird world of Tom Waits, and Swordfishtrombones proves to be his most kaleidoscopic entrapment of all things interesting under the sun. “Kathleen [Brennan] was the first person who convinced me that you can take James White and the Blacks, and Elmer Bernstein and Leadbelly – folks that could never be on the bill together – and that they could be on the bill together in you,” Waits once said regarding the influence of his loving wife.
All of a sudden, a world full of wonders from bookshelves, record collections, dive bars, street corners, and fishing vessels off the coast of Argentina existed in the same song. Everything was a mad, manic and true reflection of our berserk reality. “There’s a big dark town, it’s a place I’ve found, there’s a world going on underground,” Waits grumbles from within this whirlwind like a forest monster.
In truth, it’s a strange world of escapism, and sometimes we can cling to reality a bit too much and be alienated by the sounds of the disenfranchised. Still, once you let go and dive into the disparities of the record, everything seems to become just that little bit more colourful and filled with wonder, shining like a beacon in a dimension where individualism is always cherished.
It Could Happen To You: Chet Baker Sings – Chet Baker
Chet Baker is the undoubted king of the crooners. With his matinee-idol good looks, boyish charm and effortless performances, he typified a timeless generation with his trumpeting ways. Softer than velvet, he could hush a hurricane to sleep, and if that’s not for everyone, then I don’t know what is.
However, a few thorny contrarians might think that this mellowed sound simply earmarks Baker as elevator music, and they’d be sorely misguided. Despite its decidedly hushed sounds, the album is brimming with swaying realities of romance. Unusual things take place in masterpieces like ‘Old Rebel Moon’, and they have your feet moving across the room as you bask in the sophistication of a sound that stirs the soul with ineffable style.
In My Own Time – Karen Dalton
There are mornings when Karen Dalton sounds like a vixen caterwauling in pain, and there are other times when she sounds like the only truly sincere singer to ever get behind a microphone. Accompanied by her thundering acoustic hammering, her singular style is a world unto its own. In My Own Time finds it at its raw and ragged best. It is an album of genuine artistic power. It finds ebullience in the catharsis of art. In essence, it is what music is all about, and sometimes that can be a little bit much to handle.
As Nick Cave recalled: “I was driving around, and I had this cassette on and ‘Something on Your Mind’ came on. Through the course of that song, I had to stop the car. I drove to the side of the road, and I was in tears. I really felt a shift in myself as I heard this song.” Dalton’s work has the potential to do that to anybody. I would argue that if you still hear her as a banshee, then you simply haven’t found the right road at the right time just yet, because there is undoubtedly a little kernel of the key to our existence in her hearty growl.
Blues for the Red Sun – Kyuss
The opening drone to ‘Thumb’ on Kyuss’ second album, 1992’s Blues for the Red Sun, almost sounds like the aural equivalent of a desert mirage. You could picture the somnambulant hum being penetrated by a Chevrolet Caprice shrieking through the dustbowl, screaming about bat country. It’s heavy shit, and it might wallop your mind a bit too harshly. It is, after all, one of the heaviest albums ever written in the true musical sense of the word.
In order to mimic the echoing effect that the mountains had on their sound when they played at the Palm Springs generator parties that birthed the desert rock sound, they set amps up facing directly towards each other so that certain frequencies would be cancelled out and a roaring rumble would be created in the music. However, playing guitars through bass amps and other innovative stereo tricks creates an unusual sound for the ear to wrestle with. Usually, heavy music is fast-paced and frenetic, but this lumbering beast seems to howl back through eternities. Ultimately, it is that sense of drama and primordial awe that ropes you into its sultry shimmer in the end.
