Major 'informal' albums

Stage Fright by The Band seems very informal/loose compared to their first 2 LPs.

3 of the band being on smack probably contributed to that.

They’re definitely informal releases, but not what I’m dubbing (because lack of imagination) major informal releases. I’m after that middle ground between works like those (and soundtracks, covers albums, side-projects etc) and MSs. An area of major albums that still have that informal feel - which plays out in their looseness and less formed nature etc

you're a tough taskmaster to say the least.

It’s why I can only think of a few genuine ones!

Then there's Dylan, who either has no such album, or at least three of them and maybe six or seven.

― Doctor Casino, Sunday, July 17, 2022 5:08 AM

soon as i saw this thread title i said out loud, "what? like new morning?"

Planet Waves may qualify, depending on whether you consider it major or not (it happens to be my favorite Dylan album)

Kate Bush, "50 Words for Snow".

"Aerial" was a huge event and rightly so but what next ...? Would she step away from the music business for another 12 years? And then a few years later she released a concept album about snow which was ... not what I was expecting?

I feel like if Westerberg wasn’t using an alias that Mono would be a good one.

untitled/unmastered

Maybe:

Carl and the Passions & Friends
Time Fades Away
Kojak Variety / All this useless beauty
Buhloone Mindstate
The Menace
Hindu Love Gods
Psb’s Release
Chaos and Disorder
More Fish

This is hard to define - I sort of think of them as albums that feel tossed off (even if they aren’t) and eclectic and deliberately “not major statements”. Then occasionally you get a record like Buhloone that’s one of their best things ever (imo)

Kojak Variety / All this useless beauty

Just about every Elvis Costello album post-Spike could fall into this category, honestly. The dude just shits out songs, and when he's got a dozen or so, bam! Album.

Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, 20/20, Love You

Presence
Tormato

i was with westbury on In Through The Out Door as Zep's (if they have one). but i guess there's no real reason artists can't have more than one of these? the only real limit is if they have too many of these for them to actually feel like exceptions to an otherwise more 'formal' series.

gbv 'do the collapse' (in reverse!)

Second the mention of the white album.
Every VU, to some extent (deliberately pushing out the walls of sensitive art pop perfection w "European Son," for openers, also the lurid Lou Reedisms, incl. laugh in "Heroin")(and the walls of sensitive art pop imperfection w the doo-wop-self-parody of "I Found A Reason," for closers (and the posthumous comps, VU and Another View, are also very much in this vein).
The Basement Tapes, incl. legit 2-LP, thinking esp. of "The Clothes Line Saga," "Get Your Rocks Off," "Apple Suckling Tree," "Odds and Ends," "Yazoo Street Scandal," plus the slippin' and slidin' of much of not all of the writin'--xgau:

..."serious" songs like "Tears of Rage" are all the richer for the company of his greatest novelties..."Going to Acapulco" is a dirge about having fun, "Don't Ya Tell Henry" is a ditty about separation from self...

Spoon - Transference

But if we are gonna hit it sideways a little more: The Great Lost Kinks Album, starting with its title, which incl. campy humor and seems to be snipped from clip art or a sales meeting proposal, and proceeds with items of varying value and interest, found on b-sides, soundtracks, in the can, the wastebasket, jewelry box, between sofa cushions: all kinda Kinks indeed, and I've always been happy to own it (never as a legit whole on any format other than LP, though that is still on the 'Tube, last I checked).

Presence isn't an "informal" album, it's a "half of us have suffered major life tragedies, can we even still do this shit?" album.

otm

The Cure - The Top

superchunk - what a time to be alive

whoever said buhloone mindstate is my friend whether they like it or not.

also the top? idk about that one . . .

I also second Ummagumma, though I haven't listened since I stopped tripping---but really all the Syd-era releases I've heard, Piper and Relics and some boots and his solo albums too, would fit this loose joints framework---post-Syd, they get all linear and w plenty gravity, no matter how festooned w buzzy gimmicky (however Serious) detail: I mean still worth hearing at least, for the most part, but not as much fun (exception: Wish You Were Here, which is also kind of poignant at tymes/about Syd).

linear conceptual albums are inherently this, once you get the concept, at least---or even if you don't, like I didn't re: Tommy for quite a while, but always seemed a little too stiff & normie, less than the sum of its parts. Did always enjoy The Who Sell Out, but that was so light on its feet, w/o seeming lite, and "concept"/running gag--they were no more or less commercial than evah--was a point of departure, lift-off anyway.

Also enjoyed the grab bag, from art pop w french horn of "Circles" to James Brown's "I Don't Mind" to rambunctious rave-up "The Ox," of The Who Sings My Generation (US edition)

Some more to throw out there: Zevon's Transverse City, Iggy's Zombie Birdhouse, OMD's Dazzle Ships

If True Stories was a David Byrne solo album, it probably wouldn't qualify for this list, but as a Talking Heads then probably yes.

Ciccone Youth - The Whitey Album

I disagree on the grounds that is not a major album, more of a side project.

The better SY example would be Experimental Jet Set. Opens with an acoustic number (?!) followed by their loosest, sparsest arrangements to date. A big shift from Dirty and def the sound of a band just trying out new ideas in an informal way.

agree with op that there just aren't too many of these

white album was 'informal' in the sense that they eschewed quality control and just threw everything at a wall, but also that was a calculated choice and nothing the beatles did in 1968 could really be 'informal'

ummagumma was 'informal' in that it *sucks* and no one had yet found their footing post-syd but they put it out anyway (tbf the live part rules)

basement tapes were just fucking around, right? not actually meant to be released except for dylan nuts

my first thought when i see the thread title is tom petty's wildflowers but i'm not sure if that's fully in keeping with the premise or not

Thought of Wildflowers as relaxed and playing in the same room. Counts as informal to me.

Liz Phair's self-titled album feels both like swinging for mainstream success and with songs that works individually more than as part of a cycle.

How about Something/Anything by Todd Rundgren

maybe this is me, but I kinda thought the Stones’ Exile was the default informal album.

Some interesting suggestions have come up, however I think I'm going to clarify why I think these are 'true' examples of what I mean

Wild Life - McCartney reverting to sloppy bit-of-this-and-that after the consciously album-y Ram, but this time without the novelty/marketing angle of it all being solo. It's at least him with another band noodling and tentatively trying the odd experiment - Mumbo a largely instrumental jam, Bip Bop likewise with again a minimal/novelty lyric, Love Is Strange a cover version and wholly reggae-fied just because they can, I Am a Singer a barely-formed pop song. The other four songs are, in this way, the 'real deal', more of what to expect on Wings' "proper" albums now that's he and they have gotten this clattery little testing-the-waters record out of their system (not that the ensuing albums don't have their strange, really innocuous numbers, just not half an album's worth).

Black and Blue - the template is quite similar to Wild Life, really. A couple of funk jams that aren't really fleshed into songs, another full on reggae cover just to stretch their muscles, a six-minute bluesy/vocal jazz jam highly indebted to Billy Preston, even Crazy Mama feels a bit cobbled together. This leaves only a few "proper" songs, two of which are still genre excursions into soul. Typically a Stones album esp after 1972 will have all sorts of genre dabbling but generally they'll keep the more outré or least Stonesy stuff on a leash, but B&B feels far less sequenced and thought over and more jammy - a release to keep them in the public eye while they change personnel. I can't imagine they'd have thought anyone would see this as being up there with their Imperial Phase stuff (although me being wonky I prefer it to any of those).

Diver Down - The project began with a quickie Dancing in the Streets cover to keep them in public while they went on a break, then Warner Bros encouraged them into a making a whole album similarly on the quick. So they do - half (or actually less than half) fairly typical Van Halen stuff and half EVH solo things, adventurous intros, novelties, covers. Where previous albums would keep these to a minimum (Spanish Fly, Sunny Afternoon in the Park/One Foot), DD has EVH doing three short experimental instrumentals, the group pulling together for joke dixieland and doo-wop tracks, covers of rock/R&B standards (including one which is super synthy, the aforesaid DITS). Even Secrets being slightly jazz-rock is a bit of a departure. Only Hang Em High, Little Guitars and The Full Bug are straight up Van Halen originals as one might expect of them. But no one really thinks of it as a "side" album as such because it isn't presented as one. No one skips from Fair Warning to 1984.

The King of Limbs - a Radiohead album that doesn't have that MS atmosphere. Has more of the feel of a well-loved band that has been around more than a while feeling the freedom to push a short album of tracks which are half, again, exploratory rhythmic jams - feeling themselves through whatever is taking their fancy at the time i.e. forró and future garage/dubstep - and then a few more "formal" slowies to close out - and know that'll do for now. Unlike every other album they've done, even Amnesiac, it really pushes that open feel, and it resists being looked into too much imo.

Tonight - even though Let's Dance was a pretty hands-off album for Bowie at any rate, he was still really trying for the hits there. With Tonight he is more concerned with just messing about because he's in a good place - balancing the two or three 'serious' new songs with numerous covers, more stuff to improve Iggy's bank statements, genre dabbles which feel very unaligned (the two reggae songs for instance - they feel like the choice to do them as reggae probably came about quite late) - while still knowing he can bank a hit or two from it.

Crucially, they all got away with these albums, no matter how divisive they are and how they now mostly only interest fans of the acts, and they all sell reasonably well. There wasn't really much to lose - not even McCartney at the start of Wings, who treated their early run of singles in a similar way before resting his (as I called it) Bandcamp-y attitude to discography (which comes from the end of the Beatles I think, i.e. Ballad of John and Yoko) for quite a number of years. None of these albums are Major Statements - none have 'concepts', none are double albums, none feel particularly "serious" relative to what everyone knew these artists are capable of, none sustain one genre/song idea/theme from start to end. But at the same time none are consciously minor albums either - in the sense of being soundtracks, side-projects, cover albums, tribute albums, compilations of outtakes, full-on start-to-end excursions into one genre, or albums with any particular gimmick that sets them apart. And they have the full marketing works, more or less - and as such, said marketing doesn't really play up their seeming extempore-ness.

Because of that I would rule out albums which although still feeling 'informal' to a degree are still Major Statements because of their concepts, or lengths, or when they arrived in a career - a Dazzle Ships or Something/Anything?, say. As an example of an album I think comes close but still has a point against it - something like Zooropa nails the slightly formless, spontaneous feel but the marketing/discussion around it played up its role at the apparent cutting edge of pop (Zoo TV Tour being a biiig MS after all). The sort of albums I'm after experiment - wilfully, playfully - but without it ever seeming too ardent or devout.

The Beach Boys I was thinking at the start but maybe they just have too many of these sorts of albums - anything between 1967-69 and 77-whenever? - that it would be easy to rule certain ones out because, say, Wild Honey is the "R&B" one or Love You is the "synth" one etc. etc. I'm quite taken by Friends and 20/20 fitting best I think.

Chaos and Disorder probably fits about as well as a Prince album could. Too many releases that man.

I Am Your* Singer

and Dancing in the Street* (forgive me its 5am)

i think of diver down as spare parts(, bud) -- from which DLR would be the natural winner -- to feed warners

and yes i might actually skip from fair warning to 1984

and yes i might actually skip from fair warning to 1984

That's fair! Although I think that's more a question of taste. I've never seen it taken as less of a major release just as it 'had' to be released (I think visibly keeping time is central to all those albums).

Ofc McCartneys I II & III are part of his core discography as well but I've disqualified those because the one-man-band angle is so strong. Their informality is accentuated from the off.

I don’t know if the Fall belong here, but I think Totale's Turns is a “casual” album that is among their best / most “major” (even if it doesn’t fit all the rigorous criteria of this thread).

Diver Down is pretty important to the VH narrative: seen as a return to their party hearty roots, it outsold the prior two VH LPs, and those singles crossed them over to Pop audiences in a bigger way than before, thusly setting the stage for 1984 and the Pop-friendly Hagar years.

basement tapes were just fucking around, right? not actually meant to be released except for dylan nuts

of course some dylan nuts were not happy with that version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Basement_Tapes#Criticism_of_1975_album

This may seem counterintuitive, but Madonna's Music

Pixies
The Stranglers
Tropical Fuck Storm
The Raincoats
Roxy Music / Brian Eno
some Sonic Youth

All give me informal vibes, even if the freedom in Eno's albums for example must be super calculated

Not a major album but I've just put on Return Visit to Rock Mass (by Japanese band Maher Shalal Hash Baz), which at 81 short tracks of delightful, ambling, mostly improvised music, must be one of the most informal albums I know.

The great charm of the Replacements Hootenanny and Let it Be is that they are infused with a low-stakes lets-just-throw-in-some-goofs that make the crafted songs stronger and make the personality of the band so much more vivid. All the subsequent albums have higher stakes.

Nick Cave method is it be highly worked/revised/contrived, which really goes towards explaining why he doesn't work for a lot of listeners. I recall that Nocuturama was an attempt to just spit out an album like an outlaw country artist in the 70s, not labor too much over it. And it doesn't work, save for "Babe I'm on Fire", which may be why he went back to writing in an office every day.

Lots of 70s/80s Nashville records are informal like this right?

Booming post, bendy!

Although I suppose if you were listening to the Replacements' albums in chronological order (or at the time they each came out), the "serious songs" rather then the throwaways might have seemed like the outliers.

I'm interested by Nocturama potentially being one! I haven't heard it in yonks so idk if I agree but it being the only album he's basically over done w/Bad Seeds that isn't at least pretty well-loved is what makes me think about it more than, idk, The Good Son or something.

As mentioned with Black and Blue, this phenomenon is tightly tied with the tour/album/PR cycle, isn't it? I'd say it hard for an artist Brian Eno or Kate Bush to fall into this, and much easier if it's four guys in a room with a tour being booked or a songwriter breaking in a reconstituted backing band.

Also, is this the opposite of a New Jersey? We've reached altitude, let's stay in a holding pattern.

Re-reading the original question, I would argue that the Who's It's Hard qualifies.

Major -- it got the most promotion of any Who record up to that point, though it was tied to their "Farewell" tour

Informal -- took them two weeks to record, and apparently not much longer than that to write

Quite jammy and open-ended -- arguably yes, with "Eminence Front" and "Cry If You Want" having longer-than-usual solo sections, and the album overall having a much more casual feel

Playing with other genres -- some neo-funk with "Eminence Front" and "Cooks County."

Low stakes -- they didn't have much to prove at this point, but since it was assumed to be their final record, maybe "low stakes" doesn't apply.

Quite divisive -- definitely divisive among fans (some LOVE this record), but also within the band. Roger Daltrey: "It's Hard should never have been released. I had huge rows with Pete...when the album was finished and I heard it I said, 'Pete, this is just a complete piece of shit and it should never come out!' It came out because as usual we were being manipulated at that time by other things. The record company wanted a record out and they wanted us to do a tour. What I said to Pete was, 'Pete, if we'd tried to get any of these songs onto Face Dances, or any of the albums that we've done since our first fucking album, we would not allow these songs to be on an album! Why are we releasing them? Why? Let's just say that was an experience to pull the band back together, now let's go and make an album.' He said, 'Too late. It's good enough, that's how we are now.'"