Albums you grudgingly respect / dutifully acknowledge the objective eminence, but when push comes to shove you never actually want to play / could happily never hear again.
Velvet Underground - White Light, White Heat
The Beatles - The Beatles aka White Album
The Band - Music From Big Pink
David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
David Bowie - Station to Station
David Bowie - "Heroes"
Can - Ege Bamyasi
Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street
The Aphex Twin ...I Care Because You Do
"Bypasses You Almost Completely" - the "almost" here refers to the one or two tracks on the album you unreservedly love. Usually these are The Obvious Singles e.g. "'Heroes'", "The Weight" - even when it isn't literally a single (was "Vitamin C" a single? Perhaps it was in Germany). Sometimes there's like one other track you really like e.g. "The Secret Life of Arabia".
With Ziggy, it's just "Ziggy Stardust" and "Suffragette City".
With Station, it's just "Golden Years", which is one of my absolute favorites by Bowie. The title track's eminence in people's hearts continues to perplex.
White Album, the actively liked songs would be "Blackbird" and "Something", "Back in the U.S.S.R"... A few others are nice enough ("Guitar Weeps", "Mother Nature's", "Dear Prudence", “Warm Guitar”) Its grade is lowered by the excrescent presence of some of the very worst things they ever made: "Glass Onion", "Ob-La-Di", "Bungalow Bill", "Do It In the Road". Most anything perpetrated by McCartney. Mainly, it's just very very long.
Exile is just a samey slog really. "Happy" and "Let It Loose" would be my picks here.
Apart from the sublime "Alberto Balsam" nothing from .... I Care Because You Do has ever managed to lodge itself in the memory or the heart, despite periodic attempts at "giving it another go"
^^^^
Albums that don’t qualify for this category -
- universally accepted as duff /disappointing records by Canonic artists (eg Television’s Adventure)
- albums by Canonic artists where there is no consensus about whether it’s great or shite (Strangeways Here We Come).
(I am not sure what Smiths fans feel about Meat Is Murder - to me is it is a mystifyingly slight and sterile sounding album redeemed by two luminously wondrous songs, “Well I Wonder” and “the Headmaster Ritual” and if I am feeling generous “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore” which is lushly appointed (it is lowered in my estimation by being a bizarrely misguided choice as a single - continuing a long stretch in which the Smiths could do (almost) no right when it came to the Single (from Shakespeare’s Shitstir to well the end really - save perhaps Thorn, Shoplifters, Sheila). Meat also contains some of their slightest tunes - "Rusholme", "Want The One I Can't Have", "Nowhere Fast", "Barbarism Begins" - and a couple of real graters ("What She Said", "Meat Is Murder" itself). I suppose on balance, added up, it totals out as simply not very good, even before you factor in the clinical production. But I'm sure many would disagree).
Got to say Station to Station is probably my fave Bowie album but the title track does go on a bit. Lodger is the one from his imperial phase that leaves me cold, not many decent tunes, only Boys Keep Swinging up to his highest standard. Subsequently Scary Monsters is great which gives it undeserved credence, it used to be considered part of the "Berlin trilogy" and not early evidence of the well starting to run dry
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to see to what extent albums that fall into this category are totally subjective to each listener, or whether there is likely to be any overlap / consensus at all?
ReplyDeleteEG, even your brief list contains three records I could happily listen to on repeat forever (Velvets, Can, Stones), but I do agree with you on ‘..Big Pink’, which has never fully connected with me.
My impression is of it having briefly been hugely influential upon release, but then subsequently being overshadowed for all time by the (more focused, more immediate and generally better) self-titled album which followed shortly thereafter.
Will try to think up some other examples to add to the list… in fact, just talking Can, ‘Future Days’ is probably one one that sits in this category for me personally… I’ve tried with it over the years, but for some reason it’s always remained an “in one ear / out the other” kind of listen.
I think it's a subjective thing by definition - in many of these cases a curious failing on the part of the self, or to do with the contingencies of listening (when in your life, whether you heard other albums by the artists first, encountering it in a busy time of listening when you couldn't give it the lavish due it deserves).
DeleteBut it would be interesting to see if there is any convergence e.g. with the not much liking Music From Big Pink. Sounds sort of wooden and laden and stately to me, whereas the self-titled next one is just a groove all the way through. (I don't really care for any of the subsequent Band albums - in that sense they are bit like my relationship with Van Morrison which is Astral Weeks and Astral Weeks alone).
I like Lodger or at least it's got a few more winners for me - DJ, Boys Keep, Repetition. Scary is a great album, except that there's some rather, er, strained moments on it. But the four singles are top - particularly fond of "Up the Hill Backwards", which is navel-gazing at its most beguiling. Almost like he'd heard Magazine's The Correct Use of Soap and thought I'll out-do that Devoto lad.
DeleteYoung Americans is crap. Very weird production that makes it sound as though you are listening to the band from behind a glass panel.
ReplyDeleteYounger Than Yesterday sounds a bit thin compared to Fifth Dimension and The Notorious Byrd Brothers.
Pet Sounds and Astral Weeks are albums that totally escape me, but I'm unconvinced that either VM or the Beach Boys are all that great generally.
Wow, I have the opposite opinion on Younger Than Yesterday. Fifth Dimension sounds thinner and Notorious Byrd never quite coheres as an album for me. But then I did hear it as a CD. There's certain records that through not hearing as they were made to be heard, vinyl LP with two seconds and a discernible pause midways, it causes a kind of prolapse of structure. Most of the Beatles LPs are like that for me actually because I only ever heard them as CDs.
DeleteIt may be because my copies of Fifth Dimension and NBB are original sixties pressings, whereas my copy of Younger Than Yesterday is a Demon reissue. Not sure Demon mastered their records particularly well, as the only one I bought that sounded really good was Gene Clark's No Other.
DeleteTwo that immediately jump to mind are "Horses" by Patti Smith, with "Gloria" being the standout track I adore, and "Daydream Nation", "Teenage Riot".
ReplyDeleteTwo albums that have plenty of excellent songs, but which in the end I could live without, are "Crocodiles" by Echo & The Bunnymen and "The Smiths", both spoiled by their production. My judgment also has to do with the order in which I heard them. I heard live/radio sessions of the key songs on both albums first and my later discovery of the studio versions left me cold.
Regarding "Meat Is Murder", I half concur. I like the murkiness of some of those tracks and if it's an album of mostly minor songs, like "I Want The One I Can't Have", I hear a lot of their genius in those. That said, I think where I agree with you is the track listing. It has always felt unbalanced. Here in the States, Sire released it with "How Soon Is Now?" leading off Side B, so when I first heard it the LP was much more impressive. It hung together better with those epic 7 minutes in the middle. As a purist, when I discovered the correct track listing, I made a point of sticking to the 9-track version. It was then I could clearly hear that the album was missing cohesiveness and heft. So I do agree it's an oddity in their discography, but the album expresses so many facets of their DNA-- almost everything great about them is haphazardly baked in there, scattered about in miniature-- that I can't help loving it.
Yes I'm not keen on Daydream Nation. Prefer the previous three albums - much treblier and wirier.
DeleteI would say that the White Album is in a different category: albums that should be made a lot shorter. Get rid of all the filler, in-jokes etc Like Sandinista! Or many 90s hip-hop albums.
ReplyDeleteI do actually listen to Exile on Main Street: because it is quite samey it works as a mood/vibes album to play in the background.
Lots of Radiohead fans rate In Rainbows very highly, but I've never got it. Possibly, I had outgrown them by that point and it just didn't mean as much.
Ambient-Stones, yes that makes sense.
DeleteI've always slightly resented Secret Life of Arabia at the end of the second side of Heroes because it disrupts the vibe that has otherwise been created. IIRC there's an instrumental from around this time that didn't get included (later comped) which would've fitted the bill.
ReplyDeleteFrom an R&B/jazz perspective: What's Going On and Kind of Blue. The complaint about Exile ("samey", "mood/vibes album") applies here too, and maybe this is an aspect that is key to other LPs people may be inclined to pass on.
I now realise my contradictory stance in my post re: the creation of mood/vibes i.e. what I want from the second side of Heroes, and my complaint about the other two LPs I mentioned!
ReplyDeleteI'd always give Sly's Fresh the nod over Riot. Again, the latter, although having its disruptive moments, is a bit of a mood.
ReplyDeleteI would vouch for Meat Is Murder. It's one of those records where the first side is stronger than the second - Well I Wonder is one of The Smiths' most elementally beautiful songs. The title track is fine apart from the lyric - Some sterling work by Johnny Marr on there and the bovine sound effects are grimly effective. It should have been an instrumental. Morrissey's words are petulant sixth form claptrap, which would be forgivable if he didn't come out with the same unequivocal drivel when he gets on to the subject of animal rights, even now.
ReplyDeleteBarbarism, I grant you could be a Level 42 B Side. I never really buy Marr's claims that he took inspiration from Nile Rogers. If there was ever a band who were never meant to get funky, it was The Smiths, and I do mean that as a compliment.
What I always find er.....strange about Strangeways, Here We Come is that all four members of The Smiths have insisted at some point that it's their masterpiece. It seems to divide opinion among critics, but whatever it's merits I really don't see how anyone could judge it a masterpiece.
It's got a horrid thin, fussy sort of sound. And only "Stop Me if You've Heard This One Before" is much cop as a song.
DeleteI'd say that "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me" is arguably the best *title* Moz ever produced in its immediate heart
Delete-tugging poignancy...but the song is too brief and slight to support the elaborate production that surrounds it.
Johnny Marr has always loved "Last Night I Dreamt". On one occasion he proudly mentioned that nothing else in the charts sounded like it. He seemed to be thinking of it as a 45 rather than an album track. It *was* released as a single, albeit posthumously, and utterly failed to do anything in the charts. Trying to hear it with Marr's ears, I think the song does sound better, a cool contrast to the rest of the pop charts. Maybe they thought of it as a potential left-field hit in a way "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" tried but failed to be.
DeleteAside from Marr's love of the track, in 2003 Andre 3000 said, "I personally wish I would have written that Smiths song ‘Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me.’ Genius song." Seems like a missed opportunity for a one-off TV performance. I can picture a late night talk show set, with Marr on piano, Andre crooning into the mic...
If nothing else, the White Album allows for a good parlor game in which you and your friends compete to try and whittle it down to an amazing single LP. Not too many double albums work for this (maybe none?) as they contain too few songs or people just aren't as universally familiar with them.
ReplyDeleteYes it's the classic excuse for that.
DeleteWhat would be other contenders?
London Calling. I would up the ante and argue for it to be reduced not to single LP but to an EP. Title track, "Lost in the Supermarket", "Train In Vain", er... 'Clampdown' maybe?.... 'The Right Profile' perhaps.
The EP question is a good one, I thought of that as well.
DeleteI know this is heresy-- and to be clear, I really like all the songs I'd chop-- but New Order's "Power, Corruption & Lies" would have made one of the all-time great 4-track EPs: "Age of Consent", "The Village", "Your Silent Face", and "Leave Me Alone".
"Sign o' the Times" works as a double. Theres not too much fat on that (the pedestrian "Strange Relationship" maybe?).
DeleteMind you, Prince wanted to release a TRIPLE album before the record company put their foot down, so all the substandard material had already been culled.
I have a theory that Electric Ladyland pared down to one LP would be the greatest album of all time, but I'm not sure if I can reduce it to less than 3 sides, and its sprawl contrasts well with the previous two.
DeleteStevie Wonder's Songs In The Key of Life would be a contender for this game. Not only a double, but initially came with a bonus EP. Would make a great single LP to rival Innervisions.
ReplyDeleteActually I think Songs in the Key of Life is one of the - fairly rare but not that rare - double albums that really stands up all the way through. It's soul's Daydream Nation! I say that because I had a cassette of it, taped over a C90, and somehow my dad took possession of that tape and played it incessantly, and at an uncomfortable, slightly-distorted volume often too. And even then that aggravating over-exposure didn't destroy the album for me.
DeleteA tape of Songs in the Key of Life, obviously. The idea of my Dad obsessively listening to Daydream Nation is a surreal thought.
DeleteIs Stevie Wonder the only artist to have released double albums consecutively? Meaning 'Secret Life of Plants" , the next studio release after Songs in the Key. (Although in between he released a TRIPLE album - the 'best of' Looking Back).
lol, Chicago Transit Authority
DeleteRe the Beatles, Sgt Pepper fits the bill for me. Re Adventure, what happened? Those songs are good in their live versions.
DeleteIn terms of consecutive double-albums, Todd Rundgren *almost* pulled off a triple play, with A Wizard, A True Star (which I think may be the longest-ever single vinyl LP, time-wise) bookended by the true doubles Something/Anything and Todd.
DeleteAnd not that I'm going to parse the entire discography, but I have to believe Frank Zappa had at least one run of consecutive double LPs at some point.
DeleteCut the dirges from Physical Graffiti (In My Time of Dying, Kashmir-speaking of songs we never have to hear again, In The Light), maybe the acoustic tracks (Bron-Yr-Aur, Black Country Woman) and, oh I don't know, The Rover, and it would basically be Zep's Exile On Main Street (and in a good way).
DeleteOutkast! Stankonia and Speakerboxxx/The Love Below were both doubles, right? I mean, the first one is a single disc but it's 73 minutes and 20-plus songs. And the second is a double-disc CD.
DeleteI hate that I'm even bringing his name up but the first two Kanye releases clocked in at over 70 minutes, though I don't think either one was meant to be perceived as a "double album". This game gets a little harder to track once we get into the CD era, especially in the worlds of hip hop and EDM, where the "album" concept isn't quite as sacrosanct as in rock.
DeleteI thought the most obvious example would be London Calling/Sandinsta. In the comments, someone called Simon Reynolds mentions stripping down London Calling just before Simon Reynolds asks if Stevie Wonder is a unique double-doubler.
DeleteThe worst band conceivable, the Smashing Pumpkins, have released more multi-albums than single albums (presumably, when you shit in someone's ear, you want to be laying a log like a rolled-up carpet). They once defecated a streak of 5 albums where the shortest was Adore, staining 3 sides of vinyl.
If anyone's interested, Zappa's double Them or Us was followed by the triple Thing-Fish.
Use Your Illusion vols. 1 & 2!
DeleteThe Clash! I had mentally inserted Combat Rock between LC and Sandinista, but of course that is not the case.
DeleteIsn't Use Your Illusion more like a simultaneously released double and effectively a quadruple. Always found it interesting that the sensible / consensual opinion that Illusion 2 is the superior record, whereas I preferred Illusion 1 (that said, Illusion falls into a special category of records I never listened to again after reviewing - subject of a future blogpost there)
Deletethe Clash, of course! And they up the ante by following the dubble with the triple. Which i actually prefer to London Calling albeit thinking in the classic cliched way that it should be a dubble or even a single...
Historically, the earliest double albums released consecutively in the rock genre maybe might be Amon Duul II "Yeti" and "Tanz del Lemminge"... Now, I've always been fascinated by double albums, as a statement, and also by the fact that often were a collection of tracks that can range from excellent to terrible, allowing room for experiments that wouldn't have found a place on a single album. ("Revolution 9", "Free Form Guitar" from the first Chicago album, the dub versions on "Sandinista", the second vinyl of "Ummagumma", etc.). However, I think the era of rock double albums spans just from 1966 to the late 1980s, before the absolute dominance of the CD, given that the maximum duration of a CD is approximately that of a double LP (Daydream Nation is an example at the extreme end of this timeframe; it was released as a double vinyl but also as a single CD). A large number of CDs from the '90s onwards are dramatically too long and must by necessity be spread to a double vinyl (I was recently listening to "Washing Machine" by Sonic Youth; if it had been reduced to a 35-minute duration with only the best tracks, it would have been much better to listen to).
DeleteUrban Hymns by The Verve was a big disappointment to me, because I thought the two previous LP's were great. Too songwritery, too self-consciously "classic".
ReplyDeleteThere was a lot of angst at Verve giving up 100% royalties for the orchestral loop in "Bittersweet Symphony"...but remove that and you're essentially left with an Oasis B-side.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a great tune!
DeleteRundgren's slightly later Initiation is even longer than A Wizard, A True Star - by more than ten minutes!
ReplyDeleteDiamond Dogs is the golden-years Bowie album which has never fully persuaded me. I mean, Orwell's 1984 is surely antithetical to the glam aesthetic. The boot stamping on a human face for eternity was not a platform boot.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to nominate OK Computer. The student sneering tenor and the constant allusiveness ultimately wearies me.
Imagine. I detest the title track, and if you're not fully persuaded of John Lennon's genius, the album seems much shallower than its reputation bleats. However, the best song How Do You Sleep destroys the image of Lennon as the activist for peace, revealing a bitter thug spoiling for a fight, and that's much more interesting.
Actually, scratch that. I can't say I revere either Radiohead or John Lennon. But I'll stick with Diamond Dogs.
DeleteThought of a valid example: Morrison Hotel is in no way a bad album, but it's always struck me as slighter than their other canonical works. There isn't even a 5-minute song on it!
Whereas "a platform boot stomping on a human face for eternity" - that would fit Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. Which is a real pop dystopia - you can sense his horror for yoof culture in the record shop scene.
DeleteAs I recall, Burgess specifies the boots in Clockwork Orange, "bolshy big boots for kicking in litsos". That could conceivably refer to platform boots, but I think we should stick with the obvious and assume he meant the black Doc Martenesque boot as blunt instrument. Though, clockwork Orance was published in 1962. Were youth gangs wearing steel toecaps that early?
DeleteThe first Free album (Tons Of Sobs) is their only non-great album, but then it was produced by Guy Stevens, the worst producer of all time.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I can tell there are no Al Green or J.J. Cale albums that aren't great. Remarkable consistency.
On the Van Morrison reference above, I fall into the same boat as presumably most as only ever having listened.to ‘Astral Weeks’ and ‘Moondance’ plus the radio singles from Best Of. But isn’t this failure to check out his highly rated 1970s albums a rejection of good / great music for good music’s sake. Often on those Van Morrison Albums Ranked write ups that you might see on Mojo, Popmatters etc they have ‘Veedon Fleece’, ‘Saint Dominic’s Preview’ ‘Common One’ …. listed as the equal of Astral and Van the Man himself famously doesn’t like it much - think he said on a recent enough RTE Irish radio interview that it was all too samey sounding and lacked variety. Or is this for another discussion for Artist v Fan perception where the Artist is convinced his / her stuff released after the consensus ‘classic’ is better and of more artistic value as far as they’re concerned. So has anyone here bothered giving the non canonical Van stuff a listen? Like I remember an early Select issue from 1990 doing a rundown of his best albums and it raved about some of his 70s records but 35 years later I still haven’t got round to them. Laziness surely in the Spotify age.
ReplyDeleteYes I have listened to all those albums like Veedon and Saint Dominic's and Hard Nose the Highway and Tupelo Honey.... there's good songs, good singing, but the sound is so much more conventional than Astral Weeks. And it's a little stodgy somehow. There was nothing that really pulled back to listen again and again like with Astral. (I don't like Moondance much either tbh).
DeleteThe artists have a different perception of their work than the critics and the punters is an interesting one... Generally speaking, artists - and the same applies to writers - think they get better and better. Their mature work is their best, they really know what they are doing, they've got craft done now, they know how to produce.... and when they listen to the earlier records that everyone worships, all they can hear are the flaws.
Not sure if this rating your most recent release as your best ever is self-deception.... but it's rare indeed to write the creative who'll say, "well, I just lost it... I'm going through the motions now".
Talking of the Later Work.... someone who I can't be much bothered with after a certain cut-off point is Lou Reed. In particular, New York seems to me a classic empty exercise in middle-aged social concern, "warm glowing sound" though it might have. But this isn't a case of the Canonic Album by an Artist You Revere But Inexplicably Leaves You Cold, because I feel no warmer about the albums on either side of New York.
DeleteArtists just keep on putting out records! I suppose, what else are they supposed to do with themselves?
Indeed, and in many cases it’s probably a case of what they perceive as the flaws / technical shortcomings / inadequate craftsmanship which give the final result the sprinkling of magic, the unconventional allure. Similar in some ways with the great films of young directors. Many will rate their later films more highly, they’ve built up all the experience and craft now like you say.
DeleteAgree on ‘New York’ which sounded middle aged to my young ears compared to new band stuff I was listening to and I had no intention of subsequently checking out ‘Magic And Loss’ or ‘Songs For Drella’ despite the decent reviews of the time.
I think Van Morrison was at his best in Them - really feral and fierce, and I would have preferred Them to have evolved, started writing more of their own songs. Think his voice sounds a bit yelpy on his solo work, and very few of his songs are real bangers, maybe only "Jackie WIlson Said".
DeleteVeedon Fleece and Into The Music are among my most-played albums of the last few years, I'd have no problem ranking the former with Astral Weeks. Doesn't hurt that he sings a few of the tracks in falsetto which I wish he'd have done more often when he had the range. Into The Music has kind of a gospel feel, lots of "lifted up by the lord" choruses with horn sections, and always makes me think of early Dexys. Wavelength has its moments, like the wonderful title track.
ReplyDeleteListening to these is something I’ll try and target so by Christmas!
DeleteTotal agreement re ‘Exile On Main Street’. After the preceding albums it sounds really by-the-numbers and boring. Never got into it.
ReplyDeleteDon't rate the first Killing Joke album, although everybody else seems to. Very soupy and over-synthed. The two LP's that followed were colossal, though.
ReplyDeleteMy entries in this category:
ReplyDeletePrince - 1999 (Exception: Little Red Corvette)
Rolling Stones - Beggar’s Banquet (Except Sympathy for the Devil)
Doors - LA Woman (Except Riders on the Storm and the title track)
Beatles - Sgt Pepper (Except Day in the Life) (I suspect this would be everyone’s choice these days, wouldn’t it?)
Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark (Maybe except Trouble Child and Same Situation, at a pinch)
Kate Bush - The Dreaming (Except Pull out the Pin)
Cocteau Twins - Blue Bell Knoll (Except Ella Megalast Burls Forever. If that’s on it)
Regarding Little Red Corvette, at one point Prince sings:
Delete"I guess I must be dumb 'cause you had a pocket full of horses
Trojan and some of them used"
Aside from the slutshaming, who carries round used condoms? That's not what people do with contraceptives.It was that which, whilst considering other Prince lyrics, led me to conclude that Prince is really quite bad at singing about sex. Want another? When You Were Mine goes:
"I never was the kind to make a fuss
When he was there
Sleeping in between the two of us"
What, Prince, you only started having a few doubts when she was shagging a bloke in your bed while you were in it? Prince sings about sex like the school liar, always claiming that he's boffing Rachel Stevens' younger sister, and once had a foursome with both of them and their mum, even though everyone knows he's never even got his tops, let alone his stinky fingers.
One thing I think about Prince lyrics: they are very often very funny.
Delete1999 is a dud, but I would save the title track, which is immense, not "Little Red Corvette", which seems slight and a pander to American rock radio to please please me let me have a hit.
DeletePrince's albums have a spasmodic rhythm of success - Dirty Mind/GREAT, PERFECT, IMMACULATE Controversy/ SO SO 1999/ BLOATED, UNMEMORABLE Purple Rain/GREAT, NEARLY PERFECT, IMPERIAL Around the World HAS A FEW MOMENTS I SUPPOSE Parade LARGELY UNMEMORABLE Sign o' GREAT, NEARLY PERFECT,IMPERIAL AGAIN Lovesexy MERELY SOLID
But, but, but, Beggar's Banquet has "Jigsaw Puzzle" on it! And "Street Fighting Man"!
DeleteBut, but, but "Court and Spark" has "Free Man in Paris" on it!
But, but, The Dreaming! Every song is at least interesting.
But, but, but, Blue Bell Knoll! Every song is an immaculate creation, overflowing with melody. The only thing that spoils is the lame album cover.
Sgt. Pepper's - well, it does have some rubbish on it (the title track, "Little Help From My Friends", "When I'm 64", "Kite", "Rita", etc) but you don't like "She's Leaving Home" or "Lucy in the Sky" or "Getting Better"?
Delete"Jigsaw Puzzle" is a great piece of music with terrible lyrics, which I guess are Dylan inspired. Otherwise it would be a top ten Stones song.
DeleteThe thing with LA Woman is that the title track and Riders are so colossal that they overshadow the other songs, which are generally very good. Texas Radio is great, and Hyacinth House has some of the most devasting lyrics ever written, to whit:
Why did you throw the Jack of Hearts away?
It was the only card in the deck
That I had left to play
Eh, that's me above /\
DeleteOn 1999: I almost added the title track as another exception. It is pretty great. I think that maybe - very unfairly - I downrate it just slightly because of that Phil Collins song that rips it off.
DeleteAs you say, Prince albums came in waltz time: ONE-two-three-ONE-two-three-ONE-two-three.
On Sgt Pepper: I do love Lucy in the Sky and like She’s Leaving Home. Should have been an EP!
Another category I have been thinking about, inspired by all the talk about “no skips” albums: the “one skip” album, that is great except for one weak track that lets it down.
ReplyDeleteEntries in that category:
The Doors - The Doors (20th century Fox)
Jimi Hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland (Little Miss Strange)
The Smiths - The Queen is Dead (Frankly Mr Shankly, although Vicar in a Tutu runs it close)
Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde (Rainy Day Women 12 & 35)
There must be others.
Pet Sounds - Sloop John B (If it wasn't there, I would agree with the album's reputation as pop perfection)
DeleteScreamadelica - Damaged (I like it, but it belongs on one of the other albums)
Stone Rose - Elizabeth, My Dear (Thankfully, it's so short, you can just dismiss it as a minor diversion)
Sgt Pepper - Within You, Without You
(Fairly obvious, this one. It really is like psychedelic music as an endurance test)
Dare - D
Pet Sounds - Sloop John B (without it, I would agree with the album's reputation as pop perfection)
DeleteScreamadelica - Damaged (I like it, but it belongs on one of the other albums)
Stone Roses - Elizabeth, My Dear (thankfully, it's so short you can just dismiss it as a minor diversion)
Dare - Do Or Die (sounds like the Thompson Twins)
Sgt Pepper - Within You, Without You (fairly obvious, this one. It really is like psychedelic music as an endurance test)
I like those two on Queen Is Dead, my cuts would be "Never Had No One Ever" and actually probably "Bigmouth" which seems very slight and borderline annoying. "Frankly" is a gas and "Vicar" is a breeze - great lyrics in both cases ("as natural as rain" to describe the cross-dressing ecclesiastic)
DeleteYeah you are right, "20th Century Fox" is a sole blemish.
DeleteAfter that the Doors albums have great moments but are wildly uneven.
Greil Marcus thinks they exhausted everything to had to say on the first album pretty much - until recovering their mojo with "Roadhouse Blues" and "LA Woman" (the song, I don't think he's that keen on the rest of the record).
The one stinker....
DeleteI find "Memories Can't Wait" a bit overwraught. I'd probably remove that from Fear of Music.
Not crazy about "The Way That Young Lovers Do" or whatever it's called on Astral Weeks.
"The Suit" is a bit of will-this-do kind of throwaway on Metal Box. Actually "Bad Boy" is pretty poor too, so I would dispense with that whole side (Side E apparently - have no recollection of the sides being lettered rather than numbered)
In his review of "The Queen Is Dead", Nick Kent said he wished The Smiths had swapped the newer B-side "Unloveable" for "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side", an older single. I can't go along with that particular trade, but I do think "Unloveable" might've fit slightly better than "Never Had No One Ever".
DeleteEd's very interesting question is, for me, difficult to answer. Whenever I've loved an album, if there was one crap tune on it I'd make myself listen to it over and over again until the song made sense as part of the album's larger patterning. But that was during an earlier era of my listening habits when I gave infinitely more attention to complete albums. Over the years, as my free time got scarcer and my obsessions waned, I no longer really immersed myself in whole LPs. I became so selective and casual in my listening that I can't even think up any post-millennium albums to answer these questions one way or the other.
One beloved album with a track I nearly always skip is The Jam's "Sound Affects". Side two is totally derailed by "Music for the Last Couple". With songwriting credits going to the whole band, maybe it was thrown in to appease Bruce and Rick. Whatever the reason, its inclusion was a mistake.
On a categorical level, I will always skip, with extreme prejudice, no matter the brilliance of the rest of the album or how forgiving a mood I'm in, any track on which Bernard Sumner raps.
I don't think The Jam ever got just the right balance with any album. There was always a duff cover version or an experiment that didn't quite come off.
DeleteThe mis-step on All Mod Cons is English Rose, which although rather charming just doesn't belong with the other songs.
Paul Weller isn't always the shrewdest at separating wheat from chaff. The Style Council mostly played to their weaknesses on Cafe Bleu and then included too many tracks on Our Favourite Shop followed by not enough tracks on The Cost Of Loving.
I don't know his solo albums that well, apart from Wild Wood and Stanley Road. Both of which I found draggy.
I've always called such examples "Ringo songs".
ReplyDeleteNick S.
ReplyDeleteMade me laugh out loud with the Bernard Sumner observation. Emphatically yes.
Does that include the almost-rapping on ‘Idiot Country’?
Yes, I'm definitely including "Idiot Country", although I confess I do sorta like that one as an explosive lead-off to what is (in my mind) a stellar album.
DeleteMind you, I've always admired Barney's open-mindedness about other genres of music. Letting in a variety of influences (Dusseldorf, New York City, Ibiza) was part of what made New Order great. But the rapping, well, although I admire his courage I always think of Dirty Harry's line: a man's got to know his limitations.
Replacements Let It Be - leave off 'Gary's Got A Boner'
ReplyDeleteElectric Warrior - leave off 'Lean Woman Blues'
What about all the albums though in 60s/70's that didn't include great singles? That doesn't really happen anymore although Oasis fans go on about what they left off the first two albums.
The Smiths brought that back with a lot of non-album singles (and also great B-sides, at least early on)
DeleteThere's yet another album category - The Odds N' Sods/Killer B's Release That Ranks With The Artist's Best (e.g. Sci-Fi Lullabies, which Suede devotees seem to revere as much as Dog Man Star.)
DeleteAlso, I'm tempted to make a playlist comprised of all the abandoned songs listed above. Maybe they're stronger together.
DeleteSmiths and Suede, of course.
ReplyDeleteOf course the opposite to this is artists who you are generally indifferent towards who randomly produce ONE album that you really resonate with.
ReplyDeleteExamples of this for me are The Fat Skier by Throwing Muses and This Year's Model by Elvis Costello.
The Costello one is easy to figure out - it's his only album produced by Martin Rushent, but I still can't understand how The Fat Skier works for me but all the other TM LP's don't.
If I'm indifferent to an artist I won't have listened to enough of their albums to pick out the good one. I guess music critics have the privilege (?) of being able to compare all of an artist's work over time.
DeleteBut there are plenty of cases where I bought one album by an artist and either ignored the rest or, if I bought another one, it languished unplayed. Some quality in the band made one good LP, and only one, more than enough to satisfy my interest. Off the top of my head: Public Image Ltd, The Sundays, Midnight Oil, New York Dolls, Prefab Sprout, 10,000 Maniacs, Arcade Fire, The Ramones, Tears For Fears, The Prodigy...groups that nailed their identity and said all they had to say in one glorious shot. I was indifferent to the rest. It's not that I disliked their other stuff, they just didn't move me enough to care about further exploration.
Which I find strange, actually, because a good album would suggest an artist can offer more. As I said I'm not even sure why I was sated by only one LP, just some quality or other in the artist that indicated the well was probably dry. And if it wasn't, who cared?
There's also the category of Greatest Hits artists, where you don't even bother with the albums. The Cure, Fleetwood Mac, Queen, Blondie...probably quite a few of these types.
Think a lot of it is just the right circumstances - the right moments, the right producer, the right studio, the right collection of songs, the band members haven't fallen out yet, etc.
DeleteProbably lots of unknowable things. It's a very odd phenomenon.