albums: are they overrated?

If we want to take a long historical view, recorded music tout court is a relatively recent medium whose importance is overemphasized

otm

i mean honestly i was bringing up the age of the album format not bc i was out to undermine the album lovers but bc it feels weird to me to find a format both so young and so arbitrarily settled on "overrated"

rob is right however that they are rated too often

though now i'm thinking about my post more and... it is true to some degree that EPs totally get shafted press-wise for being short. feel like great EPs are even more precious than good albums in a way

a lot of acts should be told to stick to EPs

metal bands especially

I’ll admit that I tend to not be into techno/house/electro full lengths that just seem like compilations of “tracks that didn’t make it onto singles/EPs” + ambient intro :-/

no

albums? terrific
songs? fantastic

I like mushy peas

Mushy peas are fantastic

What's the best way to learn about mushy peas?

Podcasts.

I think you have to see mushy peas live tbh

I think by definition they are very dead tho.

Can't make a mush without killing a few peas as the aphorism goes.

brad otm

I think album sequencing is a beautiful and amazing thing. The way that songs can influence each other and a narrative can coalesce and come into existence just from a particular arrangement of tracks is an unending marvel to me.

i like albums sometimes but frankly i'm astonished at how many you all are able to find that you seem to enjoy. many people here nominate more albums for the year-end poll than i think i bothered to even listen to all year, and i wouldn't even say i particularly enjoyed many of the ones i did hear

Astonishing Adventures On ILM

I don’t know but your mom sure is!

I think album sequencing is a beautiful and amazing thing. The way that songs can influence each other and a narrative can coalesce and come into existence just from a particular arrangement of tracks is an unending marvel to me.

― Lily Dale, Sunday, 10 January 2021 03:57 (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

a lot of my favourite albums of all time - Silent Shout, Ten Love Songs, No Way Down - make me think of that Kodwo Eshun quote on Drexciya: "an object from the world it releases." An album that creates its own world, one that I as a listener didn't previously belong to, and seems to exist on its own terms as a fully-formed product resulting from that world, yet able to invite me in through pleasure and intrigue. This new place I didn't know existed but I want to be part of - that's what I think can elevate an album from a mere collection of songs into an artistic statement.

next we need to ask: are tracks overrated?

I think album sequencing is a beautiful and amazing thing. The way that songs can influence each other and a narrative can coalesce and come into existence just from a particular arrangement of tracks is an unending marvel to me.

― Lily Dale, Sunday, January 10, 2021 4:57 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think I ever experienced the pleasure of "great sequencing". How does a song influence the next one / respond to the previous one ?
I do appreciate contrasts, atmosphere, consistency, diversity, returning themes, but sequencing / narrative ? Probably because I'm not looking for it.
The way boxedjoy puts it, an encapsulated world, speaks more to me.

Maybe narrative isn't quite the right word - "arc" would cover more ground, maybe.

The album I always think of as having perfect sequencing is Springsteen's Nebraska, in that I think almost all the songs have less impact on their own and would have less impact in any other order; it feels to me like each song sets up the conditions for me to want to listen to the next one. I would never listen to "Used Cars" on my own, but by the time it shows up in the sequence, I feel like it's the exact thing I want to hear at that moment.

Thinking about examples of narrative, though - one of my favorite albums is Common Sense by John Prine. The first few songs are character-based, bitterly funny, sometimes angry, focused on people trying to make it in America and failing. Then there's a descent into surrealist depression, kicked off by the song "Wedding Day in Funeralville" and reaching peak intensity with "Way Down," a first-person about a state of depression so deep it's bordering on psychosis. That takes us halfway through the album, then we climb back up - not all the way, but enough that there are other people in the picture: friends, lovers. The lyrics on this side of the album are mostly confessional, first-person, empathetic - still darkly funny, but the humor is gentler, more wry, less angry. Then there's a lovely song of pure mourning, "He was in Heaven Before He Died," and then the album ends with a fun cover of "You Never Can Tell," as if to say, "Yes, every wedding day is in funeralville, that's just the way life is, what can you do?"

To me, there's a narrative that takes shape there. It's not a concept album, there's no explicit through-line, and yet I come away with a sense of someone moving from reflexive, defensive bitterness at the fucked-upness of the world to self-awareness, empathy and some kind of acceptance; by the end, the world is still fucked up, it's always wedding day in funeralville, but there's a sense that we've figured out how to live with it.

I do appreciate contrasts, atmosphere, consistency, diversity, returning themes, but sequencing / narrative ?

fwiw, everything you just mentioned = sequencing and narrative to me

I was going to say!

I also like noticing the "cliches" of album sequencing (first single = opening track, epic length closer, penultimate song often the weakest, "side closers" etc) and seeing how acts toy with them or lean into them. I think a little less of album-oriented artists who don't think long and hard about this (Lana del Rey outside of Ultraviolence is a good example)

(example of someone who is careless about sequencing, I mean)

From that excellent description of "the arc" of Common Sense, you might be describing Nebraska as well! Compare He Was in Heaven to My Father's House for example.

My assumption is that "album-oriented artists" all care about the sequencing on their releases, they are just going for different effects than I might prefer. For instance, Kid A was obviously sequenced to confound the rock audience off the top, and when I listen to it I combine it with the Amnesiac tracks to make a mix I prefer. Songs of Love and Hate by Leonard Cohen is another collection of eight good-to-great songs that I can't make it though in their original running order.

Lana Del Ray doesn't seem to me to be particularly perverse or willful in her sequencing. NFR! was about as well paced as a collection of almost all down-tempo songs could be.

Kid A was obviously sequenced to confound the rock audience off the top

This isn't obvious to me at all fwiw. Not that I think they were trying to cater to a rock audience per se but I think the sequencing is really effective in its own right and has never struck me as trying to make some kind of provocative or audience-baiting statement.

I suspect Thom got a kick out of keeping his "normal" voice cloaked or in some way altered for that entire opening stretch but otherwise I agree

xxp What's the first track on your Kid Amnesiac playlist?

I made this mix which starts off with a more damped-down "reasonable man" mood. Side two is rhythmic/atmospheric, side three is the weird side bookended with instrumentals, side four is the big climax with a quiet coda. I love Pyramid Song best of all, but as track 2 on Amnesiac it makes the record way too top-heavy.

SIDE ONE
Packt Like Sardines...
Knives Out
Kid A
National Anthem
You and Whose Army

SIDE TWO
I Might Be Wrong
Morning Bell/Amnesiac
Dollars and Cents
How to Disappear
Everything in its Right Place

SIDE THREE
Hunting Bears
Life in a Glasshouse
Optimistic
In Limbo
Pulk/Pull
Treefingers

SIDE FOUR
Idioteque
Morning Bell
Like Spinning Plates
Pyramid Song
Motion Picture Soundtrack

Many great albums from 2016 to the present. The problem isn't the quality of the records -- it's that most people who review records are recommending LPs that are not solid and don't hold up over the years, while the solid records that still sound great today get buried and forgotten.

A lot of the bloated major label 21-26 track rap albums from the 2010s could have been more solid if they were 10 songs, but I'm sure that in all of those instances the more interesting tracks that I like the best would have been cut out.

I like the idea of the artist as a tastemaker. I’ve seen artists that have playlists on spotify with thousands of followers, but I haven’t seen many that uses them to promote their own material. The idea of one playlist per single where the artist shares idk 10/20+ songs that inspired a single via samples/moods/production/lyrics/whatever sounds like it would be a good strategy for me. Some fans and critics are always curious about what music do musicians listen to.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Saturday, 9 January 2021 18:05 (two days ago)

Dirty Projectors did this last year with 5 EPs! Each of the EPs was released alongside an accompanying playlist, weaving the four songs from the EP together with inspirations/influences, as well as material from the DPs back catalog exploring similar styles.

YES!

Are bums overrated

I've been called "very album-oriented" myself, as in I tend to express a lot of enthusiasm for specific records (whether singles, ep's or whatever) but no particular artist loyalty. "Artist-oriented" does seem to be the default orientation and I'm gonna say hugely overrated. As is talking about art in degrees of "greatness". Also audio and mixing engineers are very much underrated and under-recognized imo, as far as people who are largely responsible for creating the immersive little album-worlds. And people who design the instruments etc.

I think album-orientation makes sense for someone who grew up with albums as the dominant music "product", and that part of what a preference for albums signifies is exclusionary- an illusion of choice, that you can select, control or filter what you listen to (which of course you can't), define personal taste... that engagement with music is (or even should be) elective. And it's interesting that the album format has survived in the abstract. Part of what it means to make an "album" now surely has a lot to do with inviting this kind of investment, a desire to exert this powerful... whatever. It's asking for a commitment.

Buying singles, i mean the 'idea' of buying singles though not necessarily the reality, might represent making something repeatable that you happened to encounter.

Classical music notwithstanding, I'd go with: albums > artists > tracks.

xp I mean, you don't really get to choose your influences, you're influenced by everything you encounter.

an exceptional take with great value

"The truth is that albums worked as a medium only because everyone was a captive. When you look back at your favorite older albums now, I’m sure you see the weak spots that you’d happily have programmed out if you had the technology then." https://t.co/YJzrFw4oEv

— New York Times Music (@nytimesmusic) January 3, 2021

if only...

11 Love Songs

10 Golden Country Greats

oh wait

When you think about it...an album is like an artist making a playlist out of their own tracks *galaxy brain*

I have not read the thread yet but my take is that because there is no money in music anymore, or being able to take decent amount of time to just tour/practise/work on ideas, the album format is fucked because people who should be given enough time to come up with 10-15 great, cohesive songs together are busy paying the rent, and come up with their one killer idea idea or two in their spare time, making the album obsolete for many who could have wowed with the format or time to grow.

Weirdly enough, having the technology to listen to a whole bunch of albums is actually making me more likely to listen to albums. I used to just download individual tracks (or, to be more exact, ask my brother to download them for me because I am a luddite), or buy them from itunes, and so it was cheaper and easier to just put a bunch of individual tracks on my ipod and make playlists or hit shuffle.

I finally got Spotify a little over a year ago, and it feels like such a luxury to just be able to listen to albums all the way through, the way I did when I was a kid. It's so much richer and more immersive, I have a context for what I'm hearing, I have more to think about because of the way the songs interact with each other, and I'm not as likely to burn myself out on individual songs. I still make playlists, but I would say that at least 70% of the time I'm listening to albums.