Pet_Sounds

You know that feeling when you listen to an album for the first time? The uncertainty of where the music is going next, the surprise at a key change, the chills when the drums come in…. Which albums, if any, retain that feeling no matter how many times you've heard them? The only ones I can think of from my limited exploration of music are Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, the Eagles' Hotel California, and Brian Wilson's version of SMiLE.

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Everybody's dying just to get the disease

Frownland

Ornette Coleman's "Shape of Jazz to Come," Mr. Bungle's s/t, This Heat's discography, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band's "Trout Mask Replica," and Fifty Foot Hose's "Cauldron" come to mind.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Thelonious Monkey

The only album that feels fresh for me every time is Leviathan by Mastodon.

Mainly because it is a concept album and they seem to encourage multiple listens.

It tells the Moby-Dick story and it does it very well.

Norg

snoop dogg-Bad 4 me still smells like purple weed and candy

DwnWthVwls

Florence and the Machine - Lungs
Sage Francis - Human the Death Dance/A Healthy Distrust
Wu-tang Clan - 36 Chambers

These 4 albums come to mind. I've listened to each 50+ times and they just never get old.

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I don't got a god complex, you got a simple god...

Key

pg.lost - Key
Elliott Smith - XO
Reinxeed - 1912
Avenged Sevenfold - Hail To The King
Tool - 10,000 Days

Those few come to mind because whenever I listen to them, it's honestly like the first time I heard them.

misspoptart

Origa - Era of Queens. Never gets old.

Janszoon

All albums get overly familiar if I've listened to them too many times. The only things that truly still sound fresh to me are things I haven't been listening to for very long. That's not a flaw in the album, it's the way it is with things. To use the examples of Dark Side of the Moon and Hotel California from the OP: I've been listening to both those albums for about a third of a century. How can anything remain fresh that long?

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A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Lisnaholic

As always, Janszoon tells it like it is. Play anything enough times and it´s going to lose its freshness for you - unless you have the three-second memory of a goldfish.
For me, couple of albums that have retained their impact over many years, or that occasionally reveal an un-noticed detail, might be these:-

Frownland´s favourite: Troutmask
Fripp & Eno´s No Pussyfooting
Nick Drake´s Bryter Layter
Allman Brother´s Eat A Peach
Floyd´s Atom Heart Mother
Soft Machine´s Third
Van Morrison´s Astral Weeks

These win some kind of longevity prize because I´ve listened to them ever since their release. There are some other albums I regularly return to, Afro-Celtic Sound System´s Sound Magic for instance, but I´ve only been listening to that for twenty years - way too soon to decide how fresh it might remain!

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

kriswright

You know what surprised me recently? How fresh some old New Jack Swing sounds nowadays. In some respects that's some of the most dated music ever. But the production approach is so different from what you hear nowadays in pop music that I actually feel a little surprised when, for instance, Boyz II Men have that little vocal breakdown in a song like Motownphilly.

Maybe I'm just getting old, though. Highly plausible.

Anyway, I should probably list some albums:

I agree about:
SMiLE by Brian Wilson (and the more recent Beach Boys release is worth checking out, as well.)
Astral Weeks, too. That's sort of the go-to album for a topic like this.
London Calling by the Clash

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel
Icky Thump by The White Stripes - there's one I wasn't so sure about when it came out, but that I really came around to over time.
Abbey Road by The Beatles. Pretty much the definition of a great rock album.

There're probably hundreds of records I could list with a straight face. So, naturally, I can't think of any other examples. D'oh!