Albums that grew on me

I first picked up this album after constantly hearing & enjoying "Cherub Rock", "Disarm" and "Today". I figured if those songs were that awesome, the rest of the album HAD to be amazing. So I brought it home, put it on...and only liked one other song on it ("Hummer"). The rest of the songs bored me so much I started using this album to help me sleep at night. Eventually I sold it because I wasn't listening to it anymore and it was only taking up space. However, I loved Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness from the moment I listened to it all the way through, and seeing them perform live led me to pick up some of their EPs and Gish.

Adore would turn me off of them a bit, but I went to see them in concert at a smallish venue right before Machina came out and it made me want to revisit this album. So I went to my local indie record store and gave it a new spin on their listening station...and I liked it better than I remembered. So I bought a new copy of it.

I've listened to my second copy many times since, and while I still don't love it as much as Gish or Mellon Collie I don't fall asleep while listening to it anymore and I genuinely enjoy every song on the album.

This album has much in common with several others on this list as far as my initial response to it goes. I didn't get into Jane's until they were broken up (the first time), and the first album of theirs I owned and loved was Nothing's Shocking. After playing it incessantly for who knows how long, I went in search of this album. I loved the first half of it, but the latter half bored me. Since I'd bought a cassette copy, that meant I only listened to side 1 for the longest time.

Over time my music tastes continued to evolve though, and one day I made myself sit through side 2. "Three Days" was by far my favorite of the 4 songs on that side, and would eventually become my favorite song on the album. The other songs, "Classic Girl", "Then She Did" and "Of Course" I appreciated the more I listened to them, and so an album I would've initially called a 6/10 grew to a 9/10.

I liked most of the songs on Evil Empire from the start, but 4 out of the 11 failed to impress me when I listened to it. Then I saw Rage in concert when they toured behind this album, and their live performances of the songs I wasn't crazy about changed my mind.

Now when I listen to this album I have no idea why I didn't enjoy those 4 songs.

I got into Manson when they opened for NIN in 1994 on the self-destruct tour. I loved their debut, as well as the Smells Like Children remix album that followed it. I was so impressed by what I'd heard so far that I was buying live bootlegs too. So when this album came out, I went to a midnight sale to get it...

And I hated it, for the most part. There were maybe 4 songs I thought were really good, but the rest sounded like they were just ripping off NIN to gain popularity (strange considering Trent Reznor produced their album...for a while I started to think he'd just given them some songs he didn't want to use). Then I went to see them live and they were nothing like the 3 or 4 other times I'd seen them. My enthusiasm for their music died.

Then a few years later Manson released Holy Wood, an album that returned to a more original sound and really had a lot to say. He'd earned my interest back. And so I started listening to his music again, and got around to giving this album another chance. I still think it's got NIN written all over it, but I've gone from only liking 4 songs to only hating 4 songs so I figure it counts for this list.

The Doors have long been one of my favorite bands, and of all their albums this is the only one I didn't appreciate immediately. My parents gave it to me for Christmas one year, and the only song I enjoyed every time I tried listening to it was "Touch Me". The rest seemed to lack the magic of all their other songs/albums.

As I've grown older I've gained a deeper appreciation for this album. The Doors were clearly experimenting with their sound here, and over time I've been able to get my head around what they're doing better. I still don't completely understand this album, but I do genuinely enjoy it when I listen to it.

Ah Lateralus...the biggest obstacle to my enjoyment of this album remains the fact that this is when they started taking themselves far too seriously. Their previous releases displayed their sense of humor throughout, while on this one it's almost entirely absent. And that makes Lateralus a bore by comparison.

Their live performances while touring behind this album didn't help my appreciation of it either. Maynard quit being a proper frontman, standing up front in interesting costumes & make-up and engaging the audience in favor of hiding at the back of the stage and letting trippy visuals swirl around the band instead. Yawn. One of the 2 times I saw them in support of this album I left early due to the boredom.

That said, when I'm in the mood for this album I really enjoy it. It's not a fun album, but it's become more interesting to me thanks to repeat listens. And when compared with the album that followed it, 10,000 Days, it sounds even better. 10,000 Days is so boring and dreadful it made me appreciate Lateralus more than I had before.

In the wake of The Real Thing, this album was very hard to appreciate. It's far more experimental than its predecessor, and I used to think the album lacked a proper flow.

But as time passed I checked out Mike Patton's other projects, and as I did his talent grew in my estimation as did my enthusiasm for the music he created. After being blown away by Mr. Bungle and Fantomas, I started listening to this album again and found I really liked it. And as you can see from my rating below, now I love it. The flow IS there, I just was focusing too much on the oddness of some of the songs to notice it before. And were it not for the fact that The Real Thing had such a big impact on my music tastes, I'd hold this one up above it.

I picked up this album on the cheap, and the first few times I listened to it it bored me. The only part I found interesting was the lyrics, though even they didn't immediately endear the album to me due to religious themes I didn't appreciate at first.

I've started to appreciate this album very recently, however, after playing it many times to help my daughter fall asleep (the fact that it makes her sleepy is another reason I appreciate it). Thanks to frequent repeat listens I've come to understand and enjoy the lyric content, many of the songs have made their homes in my head, and it's become one of my favorite albums to chill out to.

I got into Queens via Songs for the Deaf, and after seeing them live a couple times I bought & fell in love with Rated R. When I first got this album I thought it was merely OK. It didn't hit me as strongly as the other 2 albums did, and so I didn't listen to it very often.

After they opened for NIN & played possibly the best show I've seen them do, I gave this album another chance. It's funny how a great live show can encourage me to listen to an album I'm not crazy about more often.

Now when I listen to it I love every song on it, and it's worked its way up to being my favorite QOTSA album.

Show Your Bones took many listens to grow on me. At first I only liked a few of the songs & thought the rest were OK, but because I loved everything that preceded it I kept making myself listen to it until I genuinely enjoyed ALL of the songs on it.

Now if only that worked with It's Blitz!. :P

Liars has been one of my favorite bands since I first stumbled upon them. The 2 albums leading up to this one are musically and lyrically conceptual masterpieces, with a great flow to each and little in common sonically other than percussion. This self-titled album is more of a collection of songs than an album, and so the whole thing felt like a step down from their other work.

The first several times I listened to it I loved some songs, but couldn't get into others. After seeing them play most of the album live, however, I finally found my way into the songs I wasn't so enthusiastic about (see? I told you it happens often). At first I started only listening to the album at night (which really helps about half the songs here sound better for some reason), but it wasn't long before I could listen to it any time.

On this album The Dandy Warhols traded in their psychedelic, guitar-heavy sound for one more reminiscent of Duran Duran (a band I hate). I only really liked the first 2 songs (those being the title track and "We Used to Be Friends"), while the rest either annoyed me or I thought they weren't as bad as the ones that annoyed me. I respected their decision to change up their sound, but I didn't really appreciate it at first.

It would take seeing them play most of these songs live before I could enjoy them too. Now, for some reason, I love most of the songs on here and only a couple still annoy me.

One of my best friends lent me his copy of Jupiter because he was blown away by it. I took it home & listened to it, and nothing about it impressed me. I gave it back to him and told him it was OK.

Two years later, Cave In released an EP called Tides of Tomorrow, which I checked out in hopes they'd improved since I last heard them. I couldn't stop listening to it. So I went back to revisit Jupiter, and I loved everything about it. I guess it was just a matter of not being in the right mood or frame of mind at the time I'd first listened to it.

The same friend who loaned me Jupiter played this album for me one night when we were driving around. I hated every moment of it & couldn't understand why he was so excited about it.

A few years later Dillinger found a new lead singer named Greg Puciato and recorded an album called Miss Machine. One of the songs off that album wound up on the soundtrack for Underworld, and when I heard it I was very very impressed. I then went to one of their shows before Miss Machine came out and quickly became a devoted fan of theirs. After many more times of seeing them live, I finally came back to this one, and while it's not my favorite of theirs I've found an appreciation for it.

An online friend of mine with excellent taste in music put this in her top albums for 2006. Since several other albums in her list were also in mine, I decided I needed to check it out. When I finally found an inexpensive enough copy, I bought it & headed home to listen to it.

The first song that played offended my ears ("Fidelity"), and I recognized it from hearing it occasionally played over PA systems in various retail stores and restaurants. As such, I went through the rest of the album with a very negative, critical attitude. I wound up finally being impressed with 3 of the last 4 songs on it, but everything before that I'd either disliked or thought was merely OK. The next to last song ("Lady") was so amazing I decided I should give it another spin. The second time through I found I enjoyed about half the album, but still wasn't thrilled by the rest.

Anyway, I kept at it, listening to it over and over until eventually I even liked "Fidelity" and wasn't annoyed by it anymore. The lyrics won me over really, as they would when I picked up her other albums. My friend had been right.

I got into PGMG as a fan of Murder City Devils, one of whom helped start this band after Murder City broke up. I bought this album, listened to it a couple times, then abandoned it. Seeing them live when they toured behind it changed my mind, and by the time PGMG broke up in 2007 I loved every song on this album.

Pretty much the same as above, though with this one I liked about 1/3 of the songs enough to listen to it more frequently than I had The New Romance. This one I'd also come to enjoy from start to finish by the time they broke up. Fortunately they did a farewell tour so I could hear their songs live one more time after I'd finally learned to love them all.

I got into Metric after hearing Live It Out (still their best album), and had plenty of time between it and Fantasies to familiarize myself with the rest of their music. I heard a few songs off this album when they played Coachella in 2009 before it came out, and I wasn't impressed. I bought the album anyway, in hopes it'd be better than I thought...and I still wasn't impressed. A couple songs were decent, but I didn't hear anything half as good as the songs on Live It Out or my favorite songs off Old World Underground.

By the time I saw them perform live again, I'd pretty much dismissed the album. But (again) hearing some of the songs live made me give it another chance, and it's still growing on me. I now like most of the songs on it.

Tomahawk's self-titled debut was an immediate favorite of mine. The line-up of Mike Patton, Duane Denison (Jesus Lizard), Kevin Rutmanis (Melvins/Cows) and John Stanier (Helmet) was golden, and that CD rarely left my changer the first year or so after it came out. Thus with this one I think it was a case of having my expectations too high at the start.

Mit Gas proved to be less straightforward as far as song structures went, and it just took me a while to get into it. Now there are days when I feel it's superior to their debut.

This EP was released shortly after their excellent album Source Tags & Codes, and this was another case where my expectations weren't in the right place for me to appreciate it at the time. I remember seeing at least one review that referred to it as a hangover album compared to the party of Source Tags, which seems about right. Where Source Tags was bombastic and focused, this EP was mellow and seemed really dull at first.

I let it sit for a couple years and came back to it, and by then I was ready for it. Now I've come to enjoy all the songs on it, though I prefer them shuffled in among their other songs rather than sitting through them together.