"Listen Through" Albums and My Indy Cred Strikeout

Last night I picked up the Travis album, "The Boy With No Name." A few weeks ago I downloaded Charlie Hall's latest offering, "The Bright Sadness." Here's what these two albums have in common, I can type in the name in iTunes or open the album on my iPod and just let it run. This brings joy to my heart like little else.

I absolutely love the feeling of gambling on an album (as I did with Travis) or anxiously downloading an album (as I did with Chuck's) and coming out a winner knowing I came away with ten to fifteen songs that I won't soon tire of.

This doesn't happen often. I don't think of myself as a music snob because most of the bands I listen to, other people have heard of. And I love The Dave Matthews Band and John Mayer. Those are two huge strikes to my indy cred. The final strike would be that I listened to Creed constantly in high school and still rock out the "My Own Prison" album. So as you can see, I'm a bit of pop music fan despite my best efforts to conform. That being said, I still love finding new, or old albums that rock incredibly hard.

These two albums do that. Get them. Please. And anything by Patty Griffin. She also rocks in her own special way.

So those are two of my "listen through" albums. What are yours?