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10 February 2011

Albums: Greater than the sum of their parts In light of this thread, I was thinking about albums that have to be listened to as albums.[More:]

For instance, there is perhaps only one, maybe two songs on Genesis's The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway that I can listen to by themselves, but the album, listened to in its entirety, is one of my favorites.

A couple others that come to mind are Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Alan Parsons's I Robot.

Pulling those few out of a hat, it looks like the early 1970s was the peak of album rock. Or maybe it's just my era. What are your favorite albums that have to be listened to as albums?
The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
posted by knile 10 February | 08:18
Two of my recent favorite albums are Leonard Cohen's Ten New Songs and Sade's Soldier Of Love. They set a mood that's bigger than any individual song.

A thread here a few months ago got me listening to Blue Oyster Cult again. I wouldn't listen to those songs individually, but as albums they're great.

But then, I've never really learned the art of the playlist. And don't even talk to me about shuffle, if you know what's good for you...
posted by DarkForest 10 February | 08:29
Slint- Spiderland
Kanye West- My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Brian Eno- Here Come The Warm Jets
The Mountain Goats- Tallahassee (that one is like a musical novel)
Underworld- Second Toughest In The Infants
The Velvet Underground & Nico
posted by BoringPostcards 10 February | 08:34
Can't believe I forgot:

Dusty Springfield- Dusty In Memphis
Sonic Youth- Daydream Nation
posted by BoringPostcards 10 February | 08:36
Try 70% of my LP collection.

Love,
That Pretentious Music Jerk
posted by Eideteker 10 February | 09:52
Neutral Milk Hotel- In the Aeroplane over the Sea
posted by rmless2 10 February | 10:00
Seriously, though, I could name prog albums until the MetaChat servers ran out of memory, but some non-standard albums worth a listen are:

Tubeway Army/Gary Numan - Replicas (protoelectro-prog?)
Tells the story of the coming robot revolution, but in a really neat way. The songs on the album gradually get less and less human until the last track (When the Machines Rock) is pure electronic instrumental. It's a really neat meta-arc.

And speaking of meta-arcs, the entirety of Local H's corpus constitutes sort of a multi-album story arc of a band from a small town in America that makes it big. You start out with songs about being stuck in a tiny town and being a worthless piece of shit to songs about "Rock N' Roll Professionals" (rockin for real estate! rockin for lawyers, baby!). You go from being the victim in an abusive relationship (No Problem: "You blow in to town maybe twice a year / to check on me, see if I'm still here / and you make me think that it's my idea") to being the abuser (Keep Your Girlfriend (Away from Me), about a guy who unrepentantly sleeps with groupies, regardless of whether it breaks up relationships; as he says in the song, "This is nothing to do with your girlfriend."). It's like a long artistic statement expanding on the famous Joe Walsh line: "Everybody's so different / I haven't changed."

Failure's "Fantastic Planet" also qualifies, as the entire thing is a continuous loop, with recurring themes and several "Segue" tracks. Season to Risk does something similar on their album, "The Shattering," which, like Local H's "As Good As Dead" ends on a thematically similar note to the way it starts. Not exactly a loop the way "Fantastic Planet" is, but definitely rewards the full listen-through.

I can name countless others, but my time and the universe's is limited.
posted by Eideteker 10 February | 10:08
PS - I've never made it all the way through this, but it's a great resource if you like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway:

The Annotated Lamb
posted by Eideteker 10 February | 10:10
Lou Reed - New York
CCR - Willy and the Poor Boys (it's sort of an answer album to Sgt. Pepper)
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Elvis Costello - Imperial Bedroom
posted by octothorpe 10 February | 11:54
Philip Glass - Einstein on the Beach
posted by Ardiril 10 February | 12:13
Moody Blues: On the Threshold of a Dream
posted by JanetLand 10 February | 12:22
I have exactly one album like this: Metallica's S&M.

I bought it after hearing "No Leaf Clover" on the radio one night while waiting in the parking lot of the Ashton 7-11 while my father was inside buying a gallon of milk. I was driving us home from volleyball practice (as was normal at that time because I was working towards getting the 40 hours I needed of supervised driving in order to get my license). I remember having to be sneaky about buying it because it had one of those 'parental warning' stickers on it and my mother refused to let me have music that had those on it. (Little did she know that I was already swearing like a sailor at that point, but that's a different fight.)

Until that point, the only music I really owned were cassettes where I would record music off the radio. I couldn't do this during the day (because most of the songs I liked were 'naughty' or whatever), so I would sneak out of my bedroom at night, plug my headphones into the stereo system that was in the living room (and has only ever been used once besides my recordings) and I would record music off the radio. (I also used to record episodes of LoveLine too.)

So back to the album in question. That album is what I think of as my 'breaking-in' album. When I got my driver's license and was able to drive alone for the first time ever--I drove and listened to the entire album with the windows down and the volume cranked. When I got my first new-to-me car? That was the first album that would be played, from beginning to end. The next new-to-me car? First album. When I got my condo? Yup, the first album I played.

Granted, I now listen to it on iRock rather than on the original CDs, but still, that album has grown with me and has been a constant in my life. I'll listen to a song here or there every so often (and "No Leaf Clover" is in the top 25 most played songs on iRock and has been since I got one in 2003/2004) but when new things are happening--that album has been there through all of them.
posted by sperose 10 February | 12:37
Sargent Pepper
posted by Obscure Reference 10 February | 12:58
(only not misspelled)
posted by Obscure Reference 10 February | 12:58
Maggie and Terre Roche - Seductive Reasoning
posted by Joe Beese 10 February | 13:06
I've never bothered to rip the albums I have (and really enjoy) from bands like Tortoise or Mogwai or From Monument Masses and the like onto my hard drive for this reason. If I want to hear that music, I'll pop the CD into the stereo and listen to the whole album.

There are other albums that come to mind, even some hip-hop or punk titles, that work better listened straight through, but the longer, more thematic mood stuff is what springs to mind first.
posted by ufez 10 February | 13:51
The Decemberists - The Crane Wife

also it seems most DJ / techno acts who release anything more than a compilation of extended 12" cuts, will take the time to artfully craft the entire into a thematic piece best listened to wholesale. Deadmau5, specifically, and Justice (generally) come to mind.
posted by lonefrontranger 10 February | 13:59
Brewer and Shipley - Weeds
posted by danf 10 February | 14:44
If I want to hear that music, I'll pop the CD into the stereo and listen to the whole album.

I quit buying CDs when I realized that I don't actually have a stereo and was just ripping them as soon as I got them.
posted by octothorpe 10 February | 16:45
Tom Waits — 'Frank's Wild Years'
posted by Haruspex 10 February | 19:23
PS - I've never made it all the way through this, but it's a great resource if you like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway:

The Annotated Lamb


Oh, Eide... I have seen that before but not for a few years. I have read it all the way through and I will again. Thanks for the link!
posted by Doohickie 10 February | 22:45
Anything by Dory Previn. Seriously. They hit me until I heard them all in a row in an album. She used to d movie scores and plays, so I think that was a big factor.
posted by The Whelk 11 February | 00:26
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme. On occasion the local college radio station will play it while I'm listening at work, and I'll turn it off.. A Love Supreme can only be heard on vinyl, from start to finish with no interruptions save flipping the record, and maybe fetching a second cup of tea.

In an entirely different vein, the tracks of Born to Run and The Wild & The Innocent - while able to earn millions of dollars as radio singles - are better when heard as an album set.
posted by Triode 11 February | 01:08
Abbey Road!
posted by knile 11 February | 05:05
Paul Simon's Graceland, Aimee Mann's The Forgotten Arm, David Bowie's Hunky Dory.
posted by fiercecupcake 12 February | 10:14
A SHOUTING THREAD, SLIGHTLY DESPERATE || Joy Division, as animated Playmobil toys,

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