Over the past few months, I’ve been listening to a lot more music (admittedly, I wasn’t sure that this was possible). Actually, it’s been a lot more varied music. See, I listen to music all day at work, but at my last job, my jukebox was aired over speakers. Therefore, the selections had to please the musical tastes of 4 or more other individuals. Which is hard. Because I’ve found the virgin response to Bad Religion is usually an explosion of a head. So we tend to stay more mellow.

Anyway, now that I have my own office, it’s headphoneville for me. Which is nice, because I love my headphones. Granted I look like Princess Whatsherface from that Star Battles movie, but I don’t care. Good sound quality can suffer in the name of dignity. Just a little.

I’ve spent the past few months shuttling about an eighth of my collection between my home and my office, to the point where I have a modest 110 albums on tap.

The one thing that has surprised me though is just how much my tastes continue to evolve. Not change…because that indicates that I’m leaving genres behind. But evolve. Albums that I’ve read about that I’ll pick up because they sound good in theory…albums that I then shelve after three quarters of a listen because I just can’t get into it…I’m now discovering how good they are. Discs like Taking Back Sunday’s sophomore release, “Where You Want to Be,” (which is in rotation now) I’ve never fully listened to. First go around, the lead singer’s voice grated on my nerves, or the lack of a strong chorus peeved me. Small, trivial details cause me to chuck an album aside. Certain bands, releases, entire genres (read: most indie stuff) I take a turn from. I *rarely* completely rid myself of a disc. Instead, I just tuck it away to see if it’ll come back to me in a boomerang pattern.

Sure enough, the past many months have seem an upsurge in this. Is it because there has been significant change in the rest of my life? Does this cause one’s other tastes to change? Nonetheless, I’ve been rediscovering a ton of albums…bands that I thought I just would never enjoy. System of a Down (odd lyrical style), Rise Against (very aggressive), The White Stripes (pretentious and hyped), Death Cab for Cutie (grow a spine), Coheed and Cambria (emo meets prog rock?!). They have all found a fresh spot in my collection.

It’s a subtle yet amazing thing. It leaves me hopeful that other things in my life that I *swear* I’ll never do/like/say/want/try right now, could possibly…someday…just maybe…