Music to Survive the Season (and a Few Thoughts on Vinyl) by Jeff Estabrook

Hello. My name is Jeff, and I am a tax accountant.

Every year from February through April, I work long hours seven days a week doing taxes. During that stretch, most of the things I enjoy get put on hold. The one exception is music. Sitting at a computer all day gives me plenty of time to listen, and over the years I have learned that good music is the only thing that keeps tax season from feeling completely endless.

To make those months more enjoyable and to keep myself from going a little crazy, I give myself listening adventures to complete over the course of the season. Last year’s challenge was ambitious. I brought a turntable into my office and listened to my entire record collection.

It turned out to be one of the most satisfying projects I have taken on in a long time.

I started collecting records in high school, and there were plenty I had not listened to in over a decade. I knew some were probably in rough shape, but I was not sure which ones. Tax season became the perfect excuse to finally find out. As I worked through the shelves, I separated the records that still sounded great from the ones that needed replacing or tossing entirely. I also stocked up on new inner and outer sleeves to replace originals that were fifty years old and literally falling apart.

What surprised me most was how wrong my assumptions were.

There were several albums I fully expected to sound terrible. Led Zeppelin IV had no cover and had spent years wedged loosely between Led Zeppelin III and Good News for People Who Love Bad News. Glass Houses looked filthy. The Monkees looked like it might be moldy. Records from the sixties, seventies, and eighties that visually screamed trouble.

And yet, when I dropped the needle, they sounded great.

Being able to save albums I had mentally placed in the toss pile was a genuine thrill. Unfortunately, that high was balanced out by a more disappointing realization. Several records I bought new in the last ten to twenty years were in noticeably worse condition.

They looked fine. Some had only been played a handful of times. But once they hit the turntable, they skipped, warped, or just sounded off.

A few of these made sense. I played Icky Thump constantly in college. When it skipped like crazy, I was disappointed, but not shocked. I was not always sober back then, and my record care habits were questionable at best.

Others were harder to explain. When Come Tomorrow started skipping, I was genuinely surprised. I had only listened to it a few times and assumed it would be pristine. Some records did not skip but still sounded wrong. Midnights and Sam’s Town both had strange audio issues. It was almost like someone was adjusting the equalizer while the record played.

I did what anyone does in that situation. I went to Reddit.

It turns out this is not uncommon, and it is not coincidence. I am far from an expert, but the consensus seems to point to a mix of poor quality control, aging pressing equipment, and the modern push for heavier vinyl and novelty colors. Between splatter patterns, glitter variants, and collector focused pressings, sound quality sometimes feels like an afterthought.

Hopefully the record industry figures out how to consistently deliver high quality sound on colorful vinyl. If not, artists might need to accept that standard black vinyl exists for a reason.

In the meantime, I will keep dropping the needle, grinding through tax season, and trusting that sometimes the most beat up records are the ones that still have the most life left in them.