Headphones

I've been meaning to make this post for a while. For starters, I'm going to throw some images up, in no particular order, for no particular reason. Make of them what you will.

Okay, maybe there was a reason for that. My point is that one of these things is better than the other. Why would you eat a nasty McDonald's hamburger when you could have a delicious, balanced steak dinner? Why would you try to find the 20,000th Fibonacci number on a relic of the '70s when a modern computer is so much better? Why would you listen to your favorite music through the earbuds that came with your iPod rather than through some high-quality headphones? I hope my point is clear.

A quick aside on how I got into high-quality headphones. A guy who lived down the hall from me freshman year had brought his hulking desktop computer to college, and used some seriously big headphones with it. They were Sennheiser HD-555s, the (significantly less cool-looking) predecessor of the 558s pictured above. I always thought they'd looked pretty cool, and eventually in early March I wondered if I could listen to my music library...better. I asked to test-drive his headphones. Being incredibly careful not to damage them, I carried them to my room and fired them up.

I don't recall exactly what happened, but I'm pretty sure my jaw dropped. I don't know how to describe how different my music sounded, felt, but I was gripped by a desire to go back and listen to everything. The headphones really changed my music, added new dimensions to it I'd never heard before. I immediately knew I had to have a pair of my own. The withdrawal while waiting for them to come was not fun. It's like trying to describe art to a blind person; all I can advise is to find someone with good headphones and ask to try them out, like I did. I would be happy to loan anything from my collection out.

Now obviously the other possible conclusion that can be reached from the pictures is that one of these things is many times more expensive than the other. And for something consumable like a meal, it's a valid point. But if you take care of them, a good pair of headphones can last decades. (I don't have firsthand experience on this, but I've had my HD-555s almost two years, put them through plenty, and they sound better than when I got them) It's a one-time investment that keeps on paying off. If you don't have the money, I don't recommend sampling high-quality headphones as I did, because once you hear them, you never go back. There are plenty of affordable headphones that are a huge improvement over what the majority of people listen on, though; Sennheiser's HD-201s are barely $20 and have the best sound-to-price ratio I've ever heard. A top-of-the-line pair of headphones like the HD-800s isn't for everyone, but I suspect that many, many people would find a marginal improvement to their listening experience well worth it.

One-Liners

Try as I may (or not) my album review-writing can't keep up with my talent for finding interesting bands. This post aims to (somewhat) catch up. The following are one-line descriptions of some of the stuff I've been getting into lately. Hope it tickles your fancy!

Finntroll: Trollish polka metal.

Yellowcard: Symphonic pop-punk.

Primordial: Metal about ancient wars and prophesied doom.

Tanglefoot: Canadian bluegrass.

Equilibrium: Mythic metal!

Eluveitie: Gaulish metal.

Powerman 5000: Sci-fi B-movie metal.

Wuthering Heights: Frantic pirate/medieval metal.

Needtobreathe

Apologies for the recent trend in post content. Seems like it's been nothing but unoriginal content and rants lately. I was in the process of writing another one when I realized I'd left behind the reason I started this blog in the first place: good old biased reviews of albums I like!

It's hard to sum up the latest release by South Carolinian Christian rock band Needtobreathe, except that the album has soul. Just calling them "Christian rock" doesn't do their unique, folksy style justice and risks lumping them with a whole slew of excellent, reverent, but not terribly innovative bands. Besides the standard instrumentation, this album contains harmonica, banjo, ragtime piano, and plenty of good ol' hand clapping and foot stomping. Vocalist Bear Rinehart has a distinctive wail that is an instrument in its own right. The songs are diverse and uniformly enjoyable--try as I may, my words can't do them justice. But rest assured that they are fantastic, and after a few listens you'll start feeling attached to them. Especially memorable are pretty much the entirety of the title track and "Something Beautiful", the stark atmosphere and spacey drumbeats in "Through Smoke", stomping and clapping a-plenty in "Lay 'Em Down", the awesome a capella bridge in "Hurricane", the ragtime (I think), stylings of "Prisoner", and anthemic album closer "Let Us Love". Just listen to some previews or Youtube clips and the musical charm of this album will become evident.

The lyrics of The Outsiders are similarly interesting, and beautiful. Rather than take the more direct praise-and-worship angle so heavily trod by Christian bands, Needtobreathe goes abstract. God and Jesus are hardly mentioned, but their inspiration shines through the album's overall message of hope and longing for redemption. Christians will be thrilled to listen to music that presents such an original angle on the gospel and is more musically interesting than 90% of the Christian contemporary scene, and non-Christians will find a beautiful album with lines like "When the daylight breaks through the buildings of Chicago/I will stand alone in the valley of tomorrow". This is a beautiful, inspirational album that gets better with each listen, and I highly recommend it for everyone.

Listening to Music

When was the last time you really listened to music? I mean really listened to music--sat down and did nothing but listen to music, perhaps a favorite album, with no distractions? In today's musical culture it's a tough question. Our lives are pervaded by music--in the car, in stores, on the way to class; on our iPods, computers, phones, and anywhere else there's a microprocessor. Perhaps it's the omnipresence of music that makes it so much easier to ignore and pushes it into the background of our minds. I tried just listening to a favorite album today--Dark Passion Play by Nightwish. To be honest, I didn't entirely succeed. I love that album, but even so I found my mind wandering and my hand reaching for a book. Movies manage to hook our attention, maybe because they give your eyes something to do, but even for a professing audiophile like me, giving that same attention to music--good music--is hard.

Besides our frenetic, multitasking culture making it hard to slow down and just listen for an hour, the way we listen to music, and music itself, seem to be shifting away from the old-fashioned custom of listening to whole albums (maybe on vinyl). The exact same album I just listened to on my pseudo-audiophile setup sounds unremarkable on the kind of setup (iPod with cheap earbuds) that so many people are content with. And then there's the dynamic range compression that I've already written an essay about, which removes the load-soft dynamics of music and makes it even easier to tune out. When we do listen, it's rarely to entire albums--it's mixes of all different songs jumbled together in a playlist.

So I'm not really sure how to end this post, and I'll just leave it open-ended. If there's anyone else out there, reading this blog (I'm not sure), what are you thoughts in Americans' shifting music-listening habits? Do you miss the good ol' days of vinyl and undistracted music listening? I'd love to hear your thoughts.