Melody, Fidelity, Quantity

[vovat]

I'm preparing myself for the Decemberists concert next Friday by listening to their albums. Based on hearing all three in a row, I think Picaresque (the newest one) is my overall favorite, but the other two have some better individual songs. They also have more tracks that I find to be weaker or more forgettable than anything on Picaresque.

On a related note, I've been thinking recently about what makes a good album. I guess a really good album is usually one where every song is good, and they all work well together. Of course, several excellent songs can sometimes make an album, and cause you to forget some not-so-hot tracks.

I've found that I often tend to like albums with a lot of songs. People will often employ the quality-over-quantity argument, and say that an album with a few really great songs is better than one with a lot of mediocre ones. I agree, of course, but my question is: Who's to say what's really great, or what's mediocre? One person's pointless filler could be another person's favorite track. Besides, I tend to be a completist, so I prefer that a song be released even if it isn't one of the band or artist's better numbers. That doesn't necessarily mean it has to be on an album, though. God gave us EP's and rarities collections for a reason.

I suppose it's best if you can get both quality AND quantity, which does happen on occasion. I like point out They Might Be Giants' John Henry (20 tracks) and Frank Black's Teenager of the Year (22 tracks) as examples of this. Sure, they both have songs that aren't quite as great as the others. The improvisational ending of "Spy" gets old quickly. I find that "Why Must I Be Sad?" drags somewhat. "Fazer Eyes" might be a bit on the weak side. But I wouldn't say any of these songs are truly BAD, or insist that they're filler. (Honestly, using the word "filler" to refer to a song on a long album strikes me as rather inappropriate anyway. Doesn't "filler" pretty much imply that the album would be too short without it? Some people seem to think that any short song is "filler," but that makes no sense to me.) Nor do I think there's anything wrong with the flow of either of these albums. I'm sure there are other long albums that could have benefitted from a few tracks being cut, but such is not always the case.

Speaking of albums, is anything else worth getting coming out this year? I remember hearing rumors about something new from Neko Case, the two final Fuzzy Warbles discs, and even a new Cracker album, but I haven't heard anything recent to confirm that any of these rumors are true. Actually, I DO expect the FW discs to come out this year, but I have no idea when. And there's that TMBG Venue Songs DVD that's coming out soon, but that's not really an album per se.

Meh, this entry has mostly just been stuff I've been thinking about. I mean, I guess all of them are like that to an extent, but usually there's something more concrete to them. I mean, people (no, don't ask me what people, because I'm not sure I know) say to just write what you're thinking about, but usually that's really boring. A lot of the time, I think in lists. Like, when I'm bored, I'll just mentally list characters or locations from Oz books, or my favorite song from each TMBG album, or something like that. Of course, I make posts like that occasionally, but I try not to overdo it. A general rule for lists is that they can be fun to write, but they're pretty boring to read.

One thing I have been thinking about that I actually might want to write down (although not here) is a sort of compilation of the histories of the various small kingdoms of Oz. There are a whole bunch of places in the Oz books that are full of unlikely beings, and often just seem to appear out of nowhere to bother the protagonists. When I read about them, I often find myself trying to come up with histories to explain how such unusual places could come to exist, and what life might be like when they're NOT being bothered by intruders who refuse to be like them. If I could come up with a bunch of descriptions of these places, it might make for an interesting document.

Finally, happy birthday to obsessical. Welcome to adulthood! I hope you find it to be all it's cracked up to be.

Comments

[obsessical.livejournal.com]

thanks! and i'm wicked jealous that you're seeing the Decemberists. So far, all I have is Picaresque, but I love it to death. I've also got "Red Right Ankle" that a friend uploaded to our work computer, and I love that song as well. The lead singer has an amazing voice. that plus accordion on mariner's revenge? how can i resist? :P

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree. "The Mariner's Revenge Song" is probably my favorite on Picaresque. It's hard to go wrong with an accordion.

"Red Right Ankle" is on Her Majesty, the Decemberists, which is definitely worth getting.

[loz]

I don't know, I find the albums I rate highly are the ones where I like all of the songs - with the variety of music I like I would think that would happen more often than it does, but of course some songs grow on me over time.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

I've been debating the album issue for awhile. I think it's like you said, just when all or most of all the songs are decent and they sound good together. I think lousy albums are the ones where the only good songs are the ones they play on the radio, and good albums you can barely tell the difference. Like Beatles albums, if you don't know the albums and just know the Beatles from the hits, you look at the playlist of, you know, "Revolver" or something and see, "hum, Eleanor Rigby, Yellow Submarine, Good Day Sunshine... I think I know Got to Get You Into My Life too... do I want to buy this album for these four songs?" and then you listen to the whole thing and WHAP! you're like, OH, this IS one of the greatest albums in the history of the world, isn't it??? Of course for albums of songs nobody plays on the radio anyway, that doesn't make much of a difference. One of my absolute favorite albums ever is Floyd's Wish You Were Here, which only has five tracks-- granted, two of those tracks are over 10 minutes long and technically two parts of the same song. One of the tracks is "Welcome to the Machine" which has been actually one of my LEAST favorite Floyd songs, I couldn't stand it for years actually, but the rest of the album is so awesome that it overrides that, and now actually I can stand the song a lot more than I used to. So, no mathematical key in figuring out the greatness of albums... I don't know at all....

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Well, song length is another issue entirely, which I actually address in the post I just made. But yeah, sometimes an overall good album can override the bad songs on it.

[tisok.livejournal.com]

there have been a ton of good albums this year. too lazy to type them all out, but check out barsuk records and any/all jon auer/ken stringfellow projects.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I have the latest Posies album, but it didn't thrill me on the first few listens. I think it might be growing on me somewhat, but it's still somewhat disappointing.

What bands are on Barsuk? I'll admit that I don't generally pay much attention to record labels.