Ol' Arch knows which way the wind blows

Now, my album "listening cycle"...
It has to be explained.
Those of you who thought I could actually be sane are FOOLS!
Here's how it works. I usually buy a new release album by a band that I like on the day it is released (officially a monday, but sometimes sundays if the store is down with the distributor). I will listen to this album once a week (I don't [usually] write a calendar or anything, I just remember the day I listen to each album and aim to roughly listen to it on the same day the next week) until I am sick of it. During this time I can't skip a track, since this would go against the original intended running sequence of the artists. I try to appreciate the album as a whole, not just a collection of tracks. If, in this once a week listening period I happen to hear a song from the album on the radio, I will turn the radio off so as to not get sick of said song. The once a week thing worked itself out about 5 years ago when I noticed that if I listened to a new album every day, then I would get sick of it. Listening to an album once a week gives me usually about 2 months of enjoyment for a standard album (Franz Ferdinand), with the better ones getting up to 4 months, the shittest ones sometimes about 2 weeks (the new SPOD album, Liam Lynch). The awesome thing about the once a week is that if I really like a song or the entire album, I have to wait a whole week to hear its awesomeness again. So by the time the next week comes, I can hardly wait to hear the album. It's sort of like a built in self restraint so I lose the excitement of listening to a particular album, and since every album makes me feel a particular way when I listen to it (this feeling usually only lasts until the once a week period is up... once I get sick of it any feeling is replaced by an unbearable feeling of restlessness, thus kicking it out of the cycle).

After the once a week period ends, I usually put the cd to rest for a while, to be ocassionaly pulled out for a listen once every few months. Sometimes a cd may experience a renaissance that kicks it back into the the once a week cycle (the Cooper Temple Clause's awesome Kick Up the Fire and Let the Flames Break Loose). Other times a cd may stay in a rough weekly cycle for up to a year, usually getting listened to once every 2-3 week (Brand New's Deja Entendu, Funeral for a Friend or the self titled Phantom Planet). A few albums exist outside the cycle and I listen to them when I am in a particular mood (such as Stereophonics' You Gotta Go There To Come Back, Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American and REM's UP). And then there are albums such as Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots which are so brilliant that they never die. Also, after a cd is out of the listening cd, I feel free to pick and choose any songs from the album and listen to them by themselves, since there is no chance my feelings about the cd will be ruined because I already know it so well.

Now, the thing with me and music is that if I am even vaguely interested in a band, I buy their cd. Usually on the release day. If a band that I really like has a cd coming up (something that usually happens only once every 2 years for any given band) I get a sense of anticipation that I don't really feel for anything else. Well, it just so happens that I am FUCKED at the moment. So many awesome bands are releasing cds that I and my schizophrenic listening cycle and wallet can't keep up. Here are the cds that I've gotten in the last 20 days:

WHAMMO! I got greedy. And to listen to each of these once a week? That's a lot of pointless long-cuts on the way to uni so I can fit them in. And do you know what is even more fucked? This month's release schedule reads like a dream list of awesomeness. New cds from REM, Cake, Sum 41, Jimmy Eat World, Fatboy Slim, Machine Gun Fellatio, 28 Days, Elliot Smith, Robbie Williams (his new song kicks ass). Not to mention the Brian Wilson rerecording of Smile which is meant to kick ass, as well as the apparently brain-meltingly good new William Shatner album (yeah... ) which was cowritten by Ben Folds.

Help me.