There is a kind of record that refuses to play in June. Not because of the heat, though the pressing will tell you it is; it is more that the room is wrong, the light is wrong, and the music has nowhere to sit.
I made a list last year and then lost it. What follows is what survived.
A record that spends its first four minutes doing almost nothing, and then, without any announcement, becomes the only thing you can hear. In summer it feels like a waste of a side. In January it feels generous — a piece of music confident enough to wait.
Everyone says the second side is worse. It is worse. It is also the reason to own it: the drop in quality is audible as a change of room, and once you notice it, side one starts to sound like a rehearsal for it.
Some records are not good. They are correct, which is a different and rarer thing.
I have bought this record four times. Each time I decide it belongs to somebody else, hand it over, and then miss it by February. I have stopped pretending this is an accident.
None of these are recommendations. They are notes to myself about what to put on when the light goes at four in the afternoon.