Neon Bible

I listened to the Arcade Fire's second album last night with my eyes closed. What an incredible album! I already knew that I loved this album, but I haven't ever enjoyed listening to it as much as I did last night. There's a ton of lush instrumentation going on and everything fits together incredibly well.

I rarely listen to music alone. I usually just put it on while I'm in the middle of doing something else. But really, when an artist creates something, they expect that you will appreciate it with undivided attention. As a result I don't think I've felt the complete emotional resonance of this album until last night.

I haven't played Neon Bible since it came out, but I was reading "Popless Week 2" on avclulb.com, and was inspired to listen to it.

Popless just recently concluded. It was a series of editorials where the author, Noel Murray, stopped listening to new music for an entire year and only listened to the catalogue of music on his iPod, in alphabetical order, removing stuff he feels is redundant or that he won't listen to.

I would like to condense the amount of music on my iPod, but every time I try to delete something I can't bring myself to do it. I keep wondering if I'm about to delete an album that I'll end up coming to appreciate in the future even though I don't like it right now. As a result, I have about 45 gigabytes of music, much of which I will never listen to. Do I really need 500 Sam Cooke songs? Definitely not, but which 25 do I keep? There are 500 to choose from! The problem is, 500 songs is too much for me to listen to so I don't listen to any of it.