Albums

If I had a buck for every time I've been asked what music I like I would be a millionaire1. Again.

I like albums. I like the artform of the album. And I like songs that fit perfectly in there. Sometime you get a whole album full of them, and that makes a perfect album.

You follow?

Some albums are perfect. Each song slotting perfectly into the whole, and while the individual songs may be great, they only achieve their true greatness when in their place, inside their album.

If I had a buck for every album that matches this description I would have a couple thousand extra bucks to spend, at least. Who knows!

I'm listening to King Crimson's "Three of a Perfect Pair". That's one. It's not the only King Crimson album that fits the bill. He (Robert) made quite a few, and though most have been ignored by critics, they reign supreme, all through time.

XTC made a couple albums like that. Top-level song writing, top-notch performances. Stuff that continues to blow my mind decades later. I thought Andy would by living on an island somewhere but I actually saw him working in a car-wash. Meanwhile utter shit makes millions. What is wrong with this planet? Middle-men, that's what.

Sadly, most artists these days are too keen to get their latest "hit" out there that they are happy to fill the other spaces in their album with basic shit. Fillers. The sort of shit your average songwriter shits out by the dozen every day.

That isn't good enough for me. e.g. Sia. I love that gal! But fuck me, her producers suck balls (and her engineers deserve a slapping or much worse). Listen; two genius tracks + fillers does NOT make an album, no matter how many you put out!

Parklife. Now that's an album. Dark Side of The Moon is an album no matter how much you dislike it; which I do; it's album-ness knocks it out of the park, compared to most modern outings. It's almost like we've forgotten what an album is all about. That's a shame.

I accept that there's a certain amount of subjectivity involved here, but I also think I know what makes an album, and what doesn't. I get seriously frustrated trying to work my way through the crap that so often comes after amazing openers. e.g. Lizzy McAlpine's, "Five Seconds Flat". That first track is up there. Then it just descends into crap. And then crapper. I'm like, WHAT!? Couldn't you just wait a couple years and build up the material?

The album encompasses a time-frame, roughly equating to human attention span. Some albums are short (e.g. Barry White, Can't Get Enough), but that doesn't detract from their album-ness. Sometimes a quickie is just what you need. Put that shit on loop with Hunky Dory and you have one helluva night brewing.

Or Joe Byrd And The Field Hippies (American Metaphysical Circus) looped with The High's Somewhere Soon. Loop that shit and do some real work.

These are albums, people! They have a start, a middle and an end, just like movies, opera, ballet, books, all that good art stuff.

Set aside an hour of your life. Lie back and listen to Maria Schneider's "The Thompson Fields" all the way through. Thank me later. If you enjoy that experience, I could recommend other treats..

Jordan The Comeback, Broken Machine, Emperor Tomato Ketchup, You Forgot It In People, In The Wake Of Poseidon, Heligoland, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, Third, Innervisions, and so on and so on. I could list great albums all day long (that's the stuff I've been into this week) and still most of you folk will be plugging in the latest hit single and moving on. It seems like maybe the artform is dying, and this saddens me.

I think of all the amazing albums I have picked up over the years, often second-hand, or that one gem from the pile when I used to review music (Cat Powers - You Are Free, there goes a week of my life!); Stuff that hit me out of the blue, works that gut-punch me and change my life. Single tracks rarely do this.

The feeling of cleaning the vinyl, pulling all that dirt and grime out of the disc, or dropping a factory-clean pressing onto my turntable; the excitement as the stylus finds purchase, sliding into the groove, it adds something. Even the smell of old vinyl adds to the experience. The act of physically turning over the disc. Part one - Part two. There's a magic there that Spotify can't capture.

The other week I came across a Demis Roussos album I'd not heard of. I remember him from when I was a kid, some fat guy singing "Ever And Ever" and this wasn't that. It was a young dude who looked like Jesus, lost in praise, lost in song, 12" wide and I took that shit home and played and played and played it. HOLY SHIT! "Fire And Ice", it's called.

One of the tracks on it is totally fucking out there (Demis reciting Greek poetry over Gregorian chants - pretty wild!), and so they re-released the album with a new name, harking at said track, re-arranging the track order to put said track up front. And they totally fucked the album! Seek out the original and enjoy.

The hundreds of times I've played Mike Mainieri's "Journey Thru an Electric Tube", the magical experiences I've had playing that album.. None of that would have been possible had I not noticed that crazy cover in a second hand record shop.

I guess I get nostalgic about a time when folk would just sit back and let a musical artist take them on a real journey; and when artists catered for that; and all in in less than the time it takes to watch the average network TV show. These days we're happy to let the shittiest TV and movies wash over us for hours at a time because we feel that ALL the senses are covered. But they are not covered.

Maybe modern humans are too fidgety, too scrolly for albums. Maybe it's just tracks and videos and memes now, as we do other stuff; music reduced to background accompaniment. The Eyes have it, it seems.

That singular experience, me as a teenager, huge speakers set at either side of my head like giant headphones, listening to Power, Corruption & Lies at maximum volume, taking that journey with New Order, riding that sonic magic carpet to other worlds; kids these days don't have that.

I wonder if maybe they are missing out.

;o)