RIP: Good Music Albums

bento · Mar 22, 2007

This morning's drive to work I was listening to XTC's Black Sea on tape and was amazed by all the good songs on the album. "Respectable Street", "Generals and Majors", "Towers of London" being some of the more well know songs on it. Narry a one that wasn't memorable or good.

I have other albums in my music collection that I feel the same way - great from beginning to end. It's like the artists & producer carefully created the music and it's placement on the album to guarantee the greatest listening satisfaction.

Some albums I think are great:
* The Police - Synchronicity
* Ryuichi Sakamoto - Smoochy
* Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy
* Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
* David Bowie - Heroes
* REM - Reckoning

Everyone of these I listen to, I rarely hit the fast forward button. But today with the way music is packaged, you rarely get to hear more that one or two songs by an artist. Everything is based on singles, and when I listen to a more contemporary artist's album, I think most of it is filler. The only great albums coming out are "best-of" where you know all the songs anyway. No "diamonds in the rough" on these.

Questions for you:
What albums do you consider great from start to finish? (not a "greatest hits")
Do you know any artists or groups recording today that have albums that are "great" all the way through - each song is memorable and catchy, with no filler?

Thanks!

billd91 · Mar 22, 2007

I don't subscribe to the notion that the albums you list are really any different from any other album in the way they were produced or even marketed by the record companies. They were all subject to the way record companies pushed singles just like records are now. It's a practice that predated Dark Side of the Moon by many years. And the fact that Dark Side had some good singles material helped market the album and give it air time on the radio.

What these albums are, primarily, are examples of record albums made at times when the artists were firing on all cylinders. Dark Side, for example, marks the height of Pink Floyd's accomplishments as a band where all members were sharing the same basic vision of what they were doing. Albums after that, while still excellent, weren't as blessed with the same level of artistic cooperation.
Certainly I don't think being relatively artistically in sync is a necessity for making a good album. Synchronicity, by the Police, is an ironic title because the divisions in the band were nearly at their height, probably only surpassed by their lack of cooperative spirit when mixing the follow-up "Don't Stand So Close to Me 86" single. Yet the musical craftsmanship is still top notch. But also note that some songs were heavily promoted as singles.

I think your lament has to do more with the general lack of quality 'second offerings' by a lot of today's artists. This really is nothing new, however, since a lot of very popular bands on classic rock stations, known for iconic songs, have absolute dogs on some of their albums. Not every musical idea is a gem even if the artists and producers originally thought the material good enough to include on an album. It met the criteria at the time, though the song may not stand up to critical scrutiny.

Other excellent albums where I think the quality of work is pretty consistently good:

Fleetwood Mac Rumors - a truly amazing album
Billy Bragg Talking with the Taxman about Poetry
AC/DC Highway to Hell
Jethro Tull Aqualung
Midnight Oil Blue Sky Mining
Van Halen Van Halen (everything slides from there, if you ask me)
Sting Ten Summoner's Tales
the Pogues If I Should Fall from Grace with God

Faerl'Elghinn · Mar 22, 2007

The White Stripes: White Blood Cells.
Pearl Jam: No Code (or really any of the first 4, but this one has a particularly high killer-filler ratio, IMO).
Audioslave: Audioslave.

Wombat · Mar 22, 2007

Different albums work for different people at different times.

When I was in junior high school, I couldn't get enough of Neil Diamond's Hot August Night. While still decent, there are parts that kinda make me cringe now. Equally, while I like a lot of the songs by The Beatles, there are not a lot of their albums that I am crazy over, especially the early ones.

There is a very recent group that has put out two albums where I love every single song on them -- The Ditty Bops. Both The Ditty Bops and Moon Over The Freeway are wonderful collections of songs, to my ear not a clunker on them.

... then there is Beethoven's 9th Symphony ...

I have a lot of albums where I love every single cut -- Siouxsie & the Banshees Tinderbox, Fleetwood Mac Rumors, Tori Amos Little Earthquakes, The Who Who's Next, The Chad Mitchell Trio Live At The Bitter End, Bruce Springsteen Born to Run, The Pretenders The Pretenders, Flanders & Swann At The Drop Of A Hat, David Bowie Scary Monsters (& Super Creeps), etc. They come from different times and different styles. It's all a matter of taste & timing.

jonathan swift · Mar 22, 2007

There used to be very few albums that I could listen to all the way through. Lately however, this has expanded a lot. Here are some:

Murder by Death: In Bocca Al Lupa and Who Will Survive and What Will Become of Them?
Starflyer 59: My Island and Portuguese Blues
Joy Electric: Hello Mannequin
Say Anything: ...is a Real Boy
The Appleseed Cast: Low Level Owl 1&2
Sunny Day Real Estate: Diary and The Rising Tide

And that's just the top of the list, from a kid with major music ADD. Normally I can barely finish listening to a song when I'm out driving.

Darth Shoju · Mar 22, 2007

For my money:

The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Metallica Ride the Lightning
George Harrison All Things Must Pass
Led Zepplin IV (cliche I suppose but I think it is a tight album)
Guns 'n Roses Appetite for Destruction
The Beach Boys Pet Sounds
Jimi Hendrix Are You Experienced?
The Smashing Pumpkins Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Nirvana Nevermind
Soundgarden Superunknown
Black Sabbath Paranoid
The Clash London Calling
Radiohead OK Computer

MoogleEmpMog · Mar 22, 2007

I don't own a single album, past or present, on which I like every single song. The only exception would be album length classical pieces which are essentially a single 'song,' such as it is.

Actually, thought of another one:

Final Fantasy Tactics Original Soundtrack. I may not be in the mood for every single track at a given time, but there is not, IIRC, a single BAD track on the whole two-CD set.

bento · Mar 22, 2007

billd91 said:
I don't subscribe to the notion that the albums you list are really any different from any other album in the way they were produced or even marketed by the record companies. They were all subject to the way record companies pushed singles just like records are now.

True, but I'm sure there are some albums produced where the record company exec has to really work to find which song has the best hook.

billd91 said:
What these albums are, primarily, are examples of record albums made at times when the artists were firing on all cylinders.

Maybe that's a better way of stating what I'm thinking. That the artist managed to pick 9 to 12 songs that every one of them were unique, unifiying and were at the height of their craftsmanship.

bento · Mar 22, 2007

Wombat said:
When I was in junior high school, I couldn't get enough of Neil Diamond's Hot August Night. While still decent, there are parts that kinda make me cringe now.

That's funny because Neil Diamond has become one of the few artists I cringe less to than when I was younger. Maybe because I'm willing to revel in the smarminess of his music!

Bowie's Scary Monsters is another all time favorite of mine!

Flexor the Mighty! · Mar 22, 2007

Albums that are amazing from start to finish.

Pearl Jam - Vs. / Pearl Jam
Iron Maiden - Killers/The Number of the Beast/Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
Nevermore - This Godless Endeavor
David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust
Steely Dan - Aja
Vader - De Profundus