I agree Exile is awesome but I don’t think it’s crazy to maintain the Stones made marginally better and definitely more concise albums before it. That’s hard to maintain for Can and Tago Mago, mainly because it’s their first truly great album. I think it’s unusual for a band’s breakthrough album to be a double (in the sense of style not sales). London Calling is also great but I could see preferring the debut, though that’s always going to be a minority view. The conventional wisdom for many years was that Tusk was a sprawling mess and relative disappointment after Rumours, so that’s obviously not a crazy view even if it’s now fallen out of fashion . Nowadays I guess most people don’t think of albums as a commitment to a straight through listening experience but rather as a set of songs they can play individually as the mood strikes them which probably helps the reputation of sprawling albums.
― o. nate, Thursday, 18 April 2019 12:48 (five years ago) link