Albums You Don't Expect To Be "Headphone Albums," But Are

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Inspired by listening to Wings's London Town last night on headphones due to roommate sleep issues. I normally think of "headphone albums" as densely-produced, lots-of-hidden-sounds things, or to a lesser extent classical and jazz things where isolating the music helps you pick out what specific instruments are doing. London Town is pretty much on-the-surface, blandola 70s rock fare, but I'm listening to "Famous Groupies," for a long time one of my least favorite Paul songs, and somehow it just sounds TOTALLY different to me. It didn't become one of his best or anything, but it sounded like a plausible forerunner to "Hope of Deliverance," which is at least medium good and certainly not godawful. And the effect continued all throughout Side B: "Morse Moose" and "Name and Address" seemed punchier and fresher than ever, "Deliver Your Children" had a recognizable melody, etc. What exactly is going on here? How do my headphones translate this album from thin-sounding scratches to warm, comfortably authentic pop? Has anybody else been surprised like this on an album that by all indicators should not be "headphone listening"? Or is it just that I haven't listened to this record in a while and in the meantime I've become an old fogey?

― Doctor Casino, Monday, 28 November 2005 18:46 (twenty years ago)

Just about everything strikes me as a headphones album these days, which might say something bad about my speaker set-up and/or hearing. But usually when I get this particular surprise it's because some recording that sounds a little messy or mid-fi on speakers turns out to have some weirdnesses in it that actually sound fascinating on headphones -- e.g., the Love is All record. With stuff like this you get some combination of rough-and-tumble recording and the idiosyncracies (or technical limitations) or whoever produced it -- stuff that's distinct from intentionally creating some odd sound -- but while the results sometimes come out as a little bit "bad" or "wrong," they just as often come out interesting and vaguely strange.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 28 November 2005 19:14 (twenty years ago)

A better example of this might "bedroom" indie records, like Radio Dept or Russian Futurists -- they come out with weird sonic profiles that can sound really interesting on headphones. Usually the stuff is made by one person, someone without super-technical recording skills; this person organizes sound based on what sounds good or interesting to him, and based on whatever he can do with limited equipment; there's no stage where a producer or engineer comes in to brush the whole thing over and make it sound "normal." So the profile of the finished product can be really strange, even when it's not necessarily aiming to be -- which can be kinda hi-fi trippy in and of itself.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 28 November 2005 19:18 (twenty years ago)

I've had EVOL since I was thirteen, but listening to it on nice headphones for the first time revealed a lot of new stuff going on in the songs that I had never noticed before.

― owen moorhead (i heart daniel miller), Monday, 28 November 2005 19:40 (twenty years ago)

five years pass...

Matthew Dears Black City being some "house amalgam" — i guess — never expected such a delicacy that i get on cans — can'y listen to it unless corded-in.

― suspecterrain, Monday, 22 August 2011 17:58 (fourteen years ago)

can'y — that's funny — can't

― suspecterrain, Monday, 22 August 2011 18:00 (fourteen years ago)

Please reference here Good headphones albums

― suspecterrain, Monday, 22 August 2011 18:30 (fourteen years ago)

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