Jeff Tweedy weighs in on the 'still viable album'-well done!
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Jeff Tweedy weighs in on the 'still viable album'-well done!
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
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Re: Jeff Tweedy weighs in on the 'still viable album'-well d
A nice piece. I don't know if I feel as strongly about it as he does, though. I was never one for albums as a 'single, cohesive statement,' preferring that artists just record a bunch of songs; the artistry in the album then lies in the sequencing and the packaging. The danger in fetishizing the 'album' as such is that it can lead to ponderous 'concept albums' and other such sustained exercises that tend to try my patience, preferring as I do the punchy urgency and varied stylings of The Beatles (or EC in his salad days).
That said, I may not be fully coherent on this myself. Yes, I like records that move around, avoid suffocating you by dwelling in a single, narrowly-defined musical or lyrical box for 40 minutes. At the same time, a record that is subtly unified - say, by a relatively limited sound palette, as with Help! or Rubber Soul or 'Love and Theft,' possibly my all-time favourite - often seems to be the best of both worlds, providing coherence while avoiding wild eclecticism on the one hand, and a tyrannical imposition of a monomaniacal agenda on the other.
I definitely share Tweedy's fondness for a definite Side One and Side Two - the loss of that break being something I always lamented with CDs, especially when it was committed upon albums originally meant for vinyl and designed with that break in mind. And his observation that the added length made possible by CDs actually led to worse outcomes is spot on. How much better would National Ransom be if EC had needed the discipline of trimming its fat? It could have been his greatest album, ever. Instead you kind of have to sort through it, skipping four or five duff tracks.
And anyway, is the album, in the sense of being a collection of new songs released by an artist at a specific moment in time, really in jeopardy? What the new technology does is empower people who never really gave a rat's ass about music to begin with. I don't know how many times I heard people say, back in the vinyl-CD era, that 'most albums only have one or two good songs on them anyway.' For such people, the album was always a needless accretion, a rip-off. Now they're happy. But there's no sign, as far as I can see, that the album as such is really going to go anywhere.
That said, I may not be fully coherent on this myself. Yes, I like records that move around, avoid suffocating you by dwelling in a single, narrowly-defined musical or lyrical box for 40 minutes. At the same time, a record that is subtly unified - say, by a relatively limited sound palette, as with Help! or Rubber Soul or 'Love and Theft,' possibly my all-time favourite - often seems to be the best of both worlds, providing coherence while avoiding wild eclecticism on the one hand, and a tyrannical imposition of a monomaniacal agenda on the other.
I definitely share Tweedy's fondness for a definite Side One and Side Two - the loss of that break being something I always lamented with CDs, especially when it was committed upon albums originally meant for vinyl and designed with that break in mind. And his observation that the added length made possible by CDs actually led to worse outcomes is spot on. How much better would National Ransom be if EC had needed the discipline of trimming its fat? It could have been his greatest album, ever. Instead you kind of have to sort through it, skipping four or five duff tracks.
And anyway, is the album, in the sense of being a collection of new songs released by an artist at a specific moment in time, really in jeopardy? What the new technology does is empower people who never really gave a rat's ass about music to begin with. I don't know how many times I heard people say, back in the vinyl-CD era, that 'most albums only have one or two good songs on them anyway.' For such people, the album was always a needless accretion, a rip-off. Now they're happy. But there's no sign, as far as I can see, that the album as such is really going to go anywhere.
When man has destroyed what he thinks he owns
I hope no living thing cries over his bones
I hope no living thing cries over his bones
- Jack of All Parades
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Re: Jeff Tweedy weighs in on the 'still viable album'-well d
PD- agree that the album,per se, is going no where in reality. I, too, also like the definite division of two distinct sides that it has provided. I do miss that with CDs. I am mixed when it comes to theme or tone, though. I probably fall more to the side that wants some linkage in the material. That said, though, a collection of good tunes has never been turned away from my turntable even if they are just songs with no subtext that joins them other than that they come from the mind and pen of the same artist.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'