Non-Rockist Music?

I have also noticed this tendency in rock criticism to consider the 'album' as the basic unit of creative endeavor. There are probably many reasons for this. One reason, as you mentioned, is that the rise of the 33 RPM coincided with the rise of rock criticism. However, rock music itself predated both rock criticism and the 33 RPM album. Like most other popular forms, rock was first marketed in a singles format - however, this was due to the techonological constraints of the time and not a deliberate choice as such. Another factor in the primacy of the album in rock criticism is probably the Beatles. In the second half of their career, they retreated into the studio, stopped playing live gigs, and began crafting album-length statements that were more than just collections of songs (the whole being greater than the sum of its parts?). For many years, the "concept album" Sgt. Pepper's was hailed as the best album ever, perhaps due in large part to the sense it gave of being a single cohesive statement. Notwithstanding these points, however, I still feel that rock as a musical form is indifferent to single vs. album considerations. Rock is defined by certain elements (among them amplification, repetition, beat) that can operate just as comfortably at single-length as at album-length or even in a live setting. It should also be remembered that other musical genres adopted the idea of the album-length statement at the same time, or even earlier, than rock did. As soon as the technology of long- playing albums became widely available, jazz artists such as Miles Davis began crafting album-length statements that were built around a cohesive theme or concept, for example: "Sketches of Spain", "Kind of Blue", and "Porgy and Bess" - all of which came out in the late 1950's - long before the Beatles ever made their first LP. You might argue that a composition or improvisation is the basic unit of creativity here, but the albums were crafted as cohesive statements that stood on their own.

mojo's "50 greatest reggae albums of all time" this month. a "rockist" approach to reggae.