Author: Albert Mackenzie. Albert is a journalist based in London, although at work he covers commodities markets Albert began writing while covering music and film – and has never lost his love for the arts.

At the start of the year, I have decided to try ‘Dry January’. I decided to not drink alcohol for an entire month. Additionally, I have been intentionally avoiding caffeine and as such, two important drinks became absent from my life, namely coffee and beer. Both have become such a large part of my life – one keeping me awake and the other fighting off my social anxieties. Even though it took me a while to learn to appreciate them, I have nonetheless become fond of these beverages.

The point is, we all have foods and drinks we love that at some point we hated. I’m sure this can happen for several reasons, as we mature and our tastes move, but we also sometimes have to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy something, or sometimes things are a little too complex and we need to give them time to appreciate them.

The point is sometimes we need to give things second chances and patience. In the last few months, I have grown increasingly aware of the fact that sometimes music takes time to grow on you, taking months to finally truly speak to you. Either way, this article is a call to give music you’re not sure about a chance.

Give it time

Nick Cave is one of my favourite artists, and I got virtually nothing out of his new album Wild God. That isn’t to say I disliked it or was even disappointed, if anything I thought “This is one to come back to.” That is exactly what I did with Ghosteen, his second most recent album (and again) an album that initially left me far from overwhelmed.

So, I waited and came back to it, and to be frank, I think I listened to it on a commute early in the morning, while I was both lethargic and distracted, and found little reason to listen to it a third time. On this third listen, I must admit I skipped through songs, gave up on others and was disappointed.

Now here comes the point – persevere. I was skipping hither and dither not giving it time and basically ignoring the album while trying to forget I was on my way to work.

The song Wild God typifies these troubles, it starts slow and I never actually made it to the end, however, that is the best bit! Once I finally made it to the end, I also realised that it was truly a great song, with the ending feeding back to the start and making the introduction so much more powerful.

If you are giving an album time you sometimes need an anchor point – you can’t listen to 11 consecutive songs you just don’t get and try and force yourself to enjoy them. For Wild God that song was Joy, which is odd because it isn’t catchy, it’s slow and ponderous – but it is beautiful and vivid in its lyricism. From this anchor point, you can start to absorb the songs around it, listening to the other songs riding off the wave of interest generated by the anchor.

This album shows clearly the precise problem with my approach when dealing with other albums I had trouble getting into: good music can take time to grow on you, catchy songs can get in your head instantly but slow and intricate pieces can take time and deserve that time.  

Try to understand it

Good music often sounds pretentious, over the top or silly on a first listen. I have found it time and again with some of my favourite bands and artists, I thought Black Country, New Road was a bit over the top when I first listened to them, and I thought Kirin J Callinan was a bit of a joke when I first heard his music, and yet, they are now among my favourite artists. In 2024 two albums come into the category of “Jesus, this is a bit pretentious” or just funny after the first listen for me. English Teacher’s This Could Be Texas and Geordie Greep’s The New Sound. The first time I listened to This Could Be Texas I thought the band were trying a little too hard, and wrote it off as overrated and moved on, unlike with Nick Cave, I had no intention of giving it another go. Then months later, after a friend asked if I wanted to go and see them live, I gave it another try.

I was wandering along a river in Cornwall on an overcast day, having spent the evening before watching Flyte in a Norman church – I was well positioned in effect to give new music a true attempt. In this state, and after skipping around the album a little I realised that many of the songs were beautiful and tender – not pretentious but honest; and honesty is often something it is quick to demark as pretentiousness. Hidden right at the end of the album are two songs, Sideboob and Albert Road. These concluding numbers are so melodically appealing and so genuinely moving I quickly realised the rest of the album must have something to it, these musicians were talented and deserved my time, and once they got it, they held my attention.

Geordie Greep is another case – the New Sound is absurd, comical, over the top and at points funny. Greep wonders through myriad genres and styles and portrays a seemingly endless array of seedy characters. My first take was “Well this is entertaining and interesting,” but it was mainly as a gimmick, this is how I felt at points about the music of Kirin J Callinan and Alex Cameron. But as is the case with the other two, Greep’s music got truly stuck in my head – the thing the album does excellently is that the music is beautiful and powerful which is an excellent base. The lyrics are bizarre and over the top but at points compelling, and almost relatable in terms of passion – “no matter how desperate or how disgusting these characters are in the songs, I hope at some point, people at least feel sorry for them or feel a similar feeling as them,” Greep said in an interview last year. All this, and the time I gave the album, allowed The New Sound to go from something comical to something powerful and moving… some things do just take time.

Watch it live

The last option is not always very achievable, I will accept, but watching music live can really add to your appreciation of it. Vampire Weekend have always been one of my favourite bands – but after the two lead singles didn’t pique my interest, I barely gave their new album Only God Was Above Us a chance. I did, however, still buy tickets to see them live hoping they’d play the hits. I was mistaken but far from disappointed.

Watching music live has multiple benefits in getting you to love a song – firstly, you are very much a captive audience. Not loving the intro? Tough luck because you’re here for the whole song. Don’t like this one very much? Too bad, stick it out. This imprisonment forced me to get to the end of several songs that I had just skipped and in doing some brought me round to them. The ponderous Mary Boone, one of the aforementioned lead singles, was a delightful respite from the until-then high-energy show and Ezra Koenig, Vampire Weekend’s frontman, sang so tenderly it was hard not to see that I was clearly mistaken in my first judgment.

One of the other main benefits of the live experience is the excitement – Only God Was Above Us is a lively album for the most part and I am not necessarily surprised that attempting to listen to racing songs like Ice Cream Piano or Classical didn’t grip me straight away while listening to them alone and in my bedroom. The crowd’s excitement, the flashing lights, and your undivided attention all create a great atmosphere to realise you love an album.

One Final Plea

It is easy to demark that David Bowie’s album you never got into as your least favourite or that new indie band’s latest album is a bit pretentious. But sometimes good things take time, but more precisely, sometimes good things take patience. So go and find that album you dislike by that artist you love and give it another go! In the words of Gary Barlow, remember:  “Just try and have a little patience.”