Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Phoenix - It's Never Been Like That

Phoenix always seems to provide very fun listening experiences. This fun definitely carries over to a workout environment. The album provides a snappy and consistently paced alternative rock experience coupled with great lyrics and lush instrumentation. There is one song that I do have a slight problem with. North is one of longer songs on the album and is entirely instrumental. I have no problems with instrumental songs, but this one just seemed to lack any sort of progression and hurt the fast paced flow of the album. It's a great song, but not for the context in which I was in.

Despite North, Phoenix still succeeds in giving a really fun workout album.

Calories: 296.1
Distance: 2.37mi

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

No Age - Nouns

Nouns is the first album so far to push me to what I believe is my physical limit, for now at least. This album provided a nice assortment of noisy indie-rock songs that made me literally say to myself "I have to run to this." That is why I believe this is yet another perfect workout album.

Calories: 249.4
Distance: 2.02mi

Monday, February 27, 2012

Neon Indian - Psychic Chasms

I wasn't feeling too great today. I'm pretty sure yesterday took a toll on me. Despite that fact, I decided I still needed to workout. I chose something that I knew would be easy and good. This album provides some great chillwave tunes that don't require you to really go all out, but you can if you want to. It's the best of both worlds.

Calories: 202.3
Distance: 1.82mi

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene

This album was a blast to workout to. It had a lot of  neat instrumentation and interesting song structures. I enjoyed the faster songs as well the quieter and slower songs. Despite its long length, it still makes for a perfect workout album.

Calories: 470.9
Distance: 4.04mi

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Lightning Bolt - Wonderful Rainbow

Today we have Wonderful Rainbow, a sort of counterpoint to that Sleigh Bells album Treats I did on Tuesday. Whereas Treats was extremely loud but still made for a great workout experience, this album shows that some albums can be just too loud and too noisy for their own good. The first four tracks gave me hope for the rest of the album, but I just found most to be too fast too often. This might be an advantage for some people, but not for me. The second half of the album also becomes quite a bit noisier and loses it's tempo more frequently, which certainly threw me off.

Overall, I just flat out did not have the endurance to keep up with Wonderful Rainbow.

Calories: 262.2
Distance: 2.43mi

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

The Go! Team - Thunder, Lightning, Strike

This album is absolutely packed to the brim with fun. From the wide array of instrumentation, to the upbeat nature, to the scratching that appears frequently, to the plethora of easily recognizable but not overtly obvious samples. This album had me bobbing my head to the beat throughout its entirety. This is a perfect workout album.

On the compressed list, I have added a fourth style to the rating scheme. Blue indicates a perfect workout album. I also may add a link to just perfect workout albums in the future. Let me know what you think.

Calories: 273.0
Distance: 2.25mi

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Sleigh Bells - Treats

The thing about Treats is that it seems as though someone half-way through the creation of this album decided to turn the loudness up to eleven. That may not seem like a compliment, but it is. Even with that amount of noise pumping directly into you, it still has an air of straight up pop-friendliness. This combination of loud and aggressive noise structures and the heavier pop beat definitely lends itself well to an exercise setting.

My only gripe was that when it was over, I wanted more. Luckily their second album dropped this month.

Calories: 255.6
Distance: 2.03mi

Monday, February 20, 2012

Pinback - Summer In Abaddon

This album had a good collection of slower indie rock songs and is so far the longest album I have exercised to. While sonically very pleasing, for a large portion of it I was thinking to myself that this album did not have the pump-up jams I was hoping for. It had me reevaluating what kind of an album I'm looking for to workout to, and my opinion on this album in that regard was mixed. Then out of seemingly nowhere the last two tracks were definitely what I was looking for and pretty much saved my workout experience.

If you want an smooth indie rock album with some songs you can briskly walk to, this is it. If you want an album to run to, pick out those last two tracks.

Calories: 320.2
Distance: 3.03mi

Also I would like to apologize for missing yesterday. I was not feeling up to par, similarly to the night before.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Death From Above 1979 - Heads Up

As sort of a follow up to yesterdays album, I decided today I would do an EP from the same band. I wasn't feeling too great today so I wanted something short and easy. Like yesterday, it's good collection of dance-punk songs. I might do two albums tomorrow to make up for the fact I did so little today.

Calories: 122.54
Distance: 1.00mi

Friday, February 17, 2012

Death From Above 1979 - You're a Woman, I'm a Machine


DFA1979 have lots of really fast paced dance-punk songs that really lend themselves well to working out. Really got me motivated to exercise. Great album.

Calories: 276.3
Distance: 2.51mi

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Nirvana - In Utero

Album was great. Pace kept me interested and the songs where the tempo was fastest got me up to full sprint. Aggression works.

Calories: 267.0
Distance: 2.64mi

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

This album was really awesome to workout to. The tempo is just fast enough to almost sync with my running speed.

Calories: 206.8
Distance: 2.08mi

Talking Heads - Remain In Light

I actually worked out to this yesterday, but since I started the blog today, I will have two updates for today. The first half of the album is great to workout to, but the second half is not. I'd say it really depends on your mood.

Calories:158.7
Distance: 1.85mi

Greetings!

This blog is about my journey to get fit with music. I plan to exercise every day to an album I have not heard yet. This site is really more of a motivational factor to actually get me to exercise regularly, rather than just saying I will and not actually do it.

Each post will contain an album, the calories I burned to said album, how far I went to said album, and whether or not that album is a good album to workout to.When I say an album is not great to workout to, it does not mean that it's qualitatively a bad album. It merely means it didn't make my workout experience that great. I'm split on whether I should provide links to download albums because of possible copyright circumstances. Voice you opinion on the matter here.

So with that, I begin.