Muppet,

I've sort of wondered about this for a little while. When you listen to music, critically that is, do you have the lyrics in front of you or do you try to decode what is being said? Also, how many spins do you give an album before coming to a rating?

Personally, I seldom reach definite conclusions after single listen (there are singularities of course) and even say someone like Phil Elverum is not always transparent and a lyrics helper goes a long way. Just wondering what your methods are. Thx.

I almost alway listen first w/o having lyrics in front of me, usually while I'm taking a walk in the early morning (my favorite time to listen). For some projects, I'll look at the lyrics shortly thereafter. Especially if there's something particularly witty or clever I want to recite later. Other times I like to leave the lyrics somewhat mysterious, and I've gone years without knowing exactly what is being said.

"The Moon" by The Microphones is a perfect example of the latter. For a while I could barely make out the lyrics, but gradually I came to understand bits and pieces, and I feel like the song is more meaningful because I'm sort of coming to understand it on my own. I only recently went back and checked them out in print (after hearing "Moon Sequel" from the Mount Eerie Dawn release --- the lyrics of which are much clearer and not buried in the mix). It fleshed out my appreciation for the track, but I feel like it was almost meant to be somewhat muddled and difficult to make out in its entirely, even if I get the overall gist of the story.

I actually don't like assigning number ratings to albums (ex. "this is a 9 out of 10" or whatever). My numbered lists at the end of the year are only half serious: the top 50 or so are basically the things I listened to the most / found the most personally rewarding or significant at that time. The others are more or less just listed in whatever order I feel like on a whim. I guess I view albums as something you can always come back to---even years later---and appreciate in a new light. Plus different albums serve different functions for me and take on certain connotations. For example, I only realized later that some albums came to define my college experience. At the time they didn't have that significance.

Music and our appreciation of it is never something that occurs in a vacuum.

Plus I don't think I could rate something like Lil Ugly Mane on the same scale as The Habibiyya unless there was a fairly limited (and ultimately superfluous) ratings parameter like how much I enjoyed listening to each in a given time frame. Which only really gives people an idea of my listening habits at a given time and not so much the music itself, as I tend to go through cycles of listening to certain genres a lot more over others.