I can’t stop listening to vinyl

A record player’s voyage

My record player arrived in the mail this week.

To be honest, it’s not really my record player. It’s our record player.

That’s not being honest, either. It’s Emily’s record player. It’s been sitting in her parents’ garage in Dubuque, Iowa for nearly three years now.

When we moved to New York, a lot of things were uncertain. She was moving into a tiny apartment with a friend. I hadn’t found an apartment yet, but it was almost certain to be with a stranger. A lot of things needed to come east, especially for me — my parents’ garage is in Connecticut. There was no going back for stuff for me. So one of the cuts for Emily was the turntable, the receiver, and the speakers.

It’s a decent turntable with decent speakers that Emily got at a thrift store in college. Neither of us are particularly knowledgeable about gear, and I’m not a very good vinyl collector. I’m terrible at crate-digging. I don’t have the patience for it, nor do I have the eye for that obscurity that can make your collection. I don’t have walls of records, or ancient gems that would inspire envy. My collection is mostly albums from bands I’ve met: the Poison Control Center, Rock Plaza Central, Laura Gibson.

These are people who I love and admire as creators and as friends. They’ve all slept on my floor at some point in their careers. They’re also all people whose music I’d buy without hesitation the day it came out, no matter what. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

I’ve read a few things lately that seem to want to figure out why we love vinyl. After all, vinyl is back.

At Pitchfork, Mark Richardson asks, “Does vinyl really sound better?” I’m not an audiophile, but I understand enough about sound to know that this isn’t true. What people mean when they say this is that the experience of listening to vinyl makes them feel better. That’s a feeling I can identify with.

I listen to music all the time. On the subway, via my iPhone. At work, through Spotify. At home, through desk speakers connected to my laptop. None of these are particularly great ways to listen to music. But on the other hand, I have access to basically the entirety of the history of recorded music. What an incredible tradeoff! I can listen to whatever I want, whenever I want. And yet, I rarely sit and listen to the music just for the sake of it.

That’s the feeling that I think people are trying to recreate when they listen to vinyl. In an era of impermanence, vinyl feels permanent. If Spotify shut down tomorrow, and I’d lose access to all the music I’ve paid them to stream over the last 1.5 years. That would be fine. That’s a risk I’ve taken in choosing to pay for the service they provide.

But owning and playing a vinyl record is a small act of defiance. It will not automatically share my activity to my Facebook friends. It will not log my play counts to my last.fm profile. If I decide I want to listen to something else, it is more than a push of a button away.

Listening to vinyl can be solitary, or it can be social. For me, it is an escape.

When we left that turntable in a Dubuque garage for three years, it was more than just an item on a list that didn’t fit in a truck. It was an understanding that moving to New York would be a time of upheaval and uncertainty. There wasn’t room for such an artifact of permanence in our lives. We’ve now settled down a bit, at least to the extent that you can in New York. It’s not a burden to have this piece of equipment taking up part of our living room.

When Emily set up the stereo, the first thing she played was a song by St. Vincent. I didn’t ask why she chose that, but I imagine it was the first LP she pulled out. More than anything, it was a test: Will this thing work? After all, we’d just had it shipped from Iowa. Who knows what it endured on the voyage.

After that, she put on a reissue of Leonard Cohen’s first album. I got it for her for Christmas last year. She’d just seen him at Barclays Center, and was really starting to get into his music. It seemed a fitting, meaningful keepsake. But until recently, we’d never listened to the physical artifact.

If I’d picked the first record we played, I’d have tried to do something monumental and ritualistic. It’s a throwback to when I was a kid. The day an album I was looking forward to came out was a sacred day. I’d go into my room, shut the door, and listen to a CD end-to-end on my bed. No distractions. I miss that feeling. Vinyl helps to recapture it.

At Quartz, DeVon Harris writes that “Hipsters are buying vinyl records, but they aren’t listening to them.” Until recently, that was us. I think it’s a shame that he thinks this is a bad thing.

Right now, the #1 vinyl album in the country is All Hail West Texas by the Mountain Goats. It’s an album that is more than 10 years old that has never been on vinyl before. On Merge Records’ website, it’s out of stock with a 4-5 week wait. What’s going on here?

Buying vinyl from an artist you care about is a high form of expressing gratitude to that artist for that which they created. Specifically, indie musicians have done a good job of fostering this relationship with fans, at least on a small scale. It’s why my friends at Maximum Ames Records press everything they release on vinyl.

On Saturday, I wanted to go record shopping to celebrate our new stereo. I picked out an album called The Night’s Gambit, by a local rapper named Ka. I’ve been listening to it a lot on Spotify, and wanted it for my collection.

In the first 24 hours I’ve owned it, I’ve listened to it 6 times.