Major 'informal' albums

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.'"

still not sure I totally get the thread but can an argument be made for REM’s new adventures as opposed to Up? The former was recorded all over the place, on the road, etc, seems like it kind of formed out of air. Up was like a conscious “we’re in the studio - reinventing ourselves - being arty - ok computer rulez” kind of thing

^I kinda said all that, lol!

What came to mind after reading the OP were mostly soundtrack albums-- Chariots Of Fire (divergent from Vangelis's previous work, huge worldwide hit), Purple Rain (Prince's first soundtrack, had several live-from-the-board recordings on it). I also thought of Ciccone Youth (my most-listened-to SY album) and Arise Therefore (not really divergent, but strange in that there is no artist name officially attached to it) and David's Town (one of my favourite Fucked Up albums is a fake compilation). Weird Era is also ranked highly in Deerhunter's catalogue (and by me) and it's essentially a bonus disc

lol sorry Morris, I ctrl-f’d “new adventures” and got 0 results so figured it hadn’t been mentioned.

all good ha ha

They aren't rock, but Taylor Swift's Evermore and Folklore spring to mind. Both massive commercial hits, both unexpected, recorded quickly, with a lot of the publicity coming from the fact they seemed to have been dashed off.

They're notable for being the two albums that finally broke Taylor Swift in the elusive Discogs.com 180gm mastered-at-45rpm marbled vinyl market. She was a nonentity on Discogs.com before that. 25,000 Discogs.com users have Reputation, 41,000 have Red, but over 70,000 have Folklore, despite the fact it only came out two years ago.

You're not a major artist unless there's a page full of comments on Discogs.com moaning about inner groove distortion.

Some other quarantine records possibly fit then—that Charli XCX one

Does the need for this to be a "major" release disqualify contractual obligation records, like several that have already been mentioned, or Islands by the Band?

Diver Down feels very much phoned in.

Especially in the wake of Fair Warning, which was a very conceptually unified album. Honestly, Van Halen II fits the bill here, too. Saith Wikipedia:

Recording of the album took place at Sunset Studio less than a year after the release of the band's 1978 debut album, Van Halen. Recording of the album began on December 10, 1978, just one week after completing their first world tour, and was complete within a week...Many of the songs on Van Halen II are known to have existed prior to the release of the first album, and are present on the demos recorded in 1976 by Gene Simmons, and in 1977 by Ted Templeman, including an early version of "Beautiful Girls" (then known as "Bring On the Girls") and "Somebody Get Me a Doctor."

That’s an example of the distinct phenomenon of a band’s first two albums being culled from the same batch of material. Devo’s first two are like that as well.

Although if effort expended on recording mapped exactly to quality of album, III would be Van Halen's best record. Surely a kind of offhanded shruggy indolence is one of VH's trademarks?

That’s an example of the distinct phenomenon of a band’s first two albums being culled from the same batch of material. Devo’s first two are like that as well.

I'm pretty sure Jane's Addiction had all the songs for their first two albums before they got signed, too.

Did we have a thread for that thing? Can’t quite remember

Grinderman feels even more informal than Nocturama. If we include "band members playing instruments they don't usually play" as a factor in these, then Out of Time might even count--more relaxed than Green.

xxxxp X too - maybe not recorded at the same time but John Doe said most if not all of the songs were written, but it was Ray Manzarek who pretty much decided which songs to put on Los Angeles and which should be saved for Wild Gift.

Arise Therefore (not really divergent, but strange in that there is no artist name officially attached to it)

Not that I disagree but singling out any one Oldham related album as "informal" is a bit of a slippery slope

xxxxp X too - maybe not recorded at the same time but John Doe said most if not all of the songs were written, but it was Ray Manzarek who pretty much decided which songs to put on Los Angeles and which should be saved for Wild Gift.

Early versions of "Adult Books" and "We're Desperate" were released as a single before they signed with Slash, so it doesn't surprise me that they'd have had a bunch of material ready to go.

Surely a kind of offhanded shruggy indolence is one of VH's trademarks?

― Halfway there but for you, Monday, July 18, 2022 2:07 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think VH are more an example of a band that is less assertive or protective of their artistic vision and more willing to concede all that to the wishes of the label or producer, especially early on. Maybe Roth is the exception, but Roth's idea of Van Halen doesn't really respect "material" as anything more than a vehicle for the band's personality or performance- so Diver Down, covers of R&B standards conform to Roth's vision anyhow.

Neu! 2 has a very “fuck around and find out” vibe for me, despite its canon status

Especially in the wake of Fair Warning, which was a very conceptually unified album.

And one of their strongest. Probably the one I'd rate second after their debut, which is one of the best debut albums ever.

Can we add Amnesiac to the "informal" pile? It comes across mostly as Kid A Part Deux. The material does come off great live, though.

Makes sense, given that they were recorded in the same sessions.

I wasn't counting Amnesiac (and others) because of them being recorded at the same time as a previous album, so the mental idea of them being second helpings is sort of unavoidable (my own specification is cruel, no doubt) (not that I don't think Amnesiac stands up on its own, mind). Also I generally just think TKOL is more the sort of record I mean. More a 'this is where we're all at now, by the way' sort of record.

still not sure I totally get the thread but can an argument be made for REM’s new adventures as opposed to Up? The former was recorded all over the place, on the road, etc, seems like it kind of formed out of air. Up was like a conscious “we’re in the studio - reinventing ourselves - being arty - ok computer rulez” kind of thing

My reason for Up feeling like it *could* have counted, more than Hi-fI, is that said 'reinvention' feels a lot more temporary, more like what they've learned from doing the more offbeat Up tracks is going to form a more songful and less vaporous follow-up album, which is what happened. Plus Hi-Fi being a relative US bomb probably took some pressure off them to provide Warners with too many single prospects (that much they seem quite ready to admit). The problem with Bill's exit though is that the album's loose sound is informed by his exit, and they were barely holding together at that point (although this emphasises the album's 'learning process' feel), so if not a MS its still high stakes.

I love the upthread case for It's Hard! I liked when By Numbers cropped up too - I quite feel that one as well despite the self-deprecating title almost offsetting it all. Maybe not very eclectic but e.g. Squeeze Box (lead single no less) and Blue Red and Grey stand out for being offhand.

Does the need for this to be a "major" release disqualify contractual obligation records, like several that have already been mentioned, or Islands by the Band?

Wouldn't say so, unless they're outtakes albums or just taking the piss (and also cover albums etc as mentioned).

I've always considered Circle of Love by the Steve Miller Band to be this type of record. Coming a few years after the huge success of a pair of albums (recorded simultaneously, I think) it doesn't attempt to recreate them but offers up some low-key almost country-ish tracks ("Heart Like a Wheel", "Get On Home") before settling into the epic all-of-side-two space blues jam "Macho City", which really threw people at the time.

As posted by Grisso/McCain on the Big Star thread, more evidence that Radio City def. pertains, at least in a key sector:
https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_classic_big_star_songs_that_arent_big_star_but_a_studio_project_du

Big Star recorded everything in their arsenal for Radio City, but it wasn’t enough for a full LP, so the Dolby Fuckers tracks were added to round out the record. The only information on the album related to the Chilton-led project is this credit: “Danny Jones and Richard Rosebrough played too.”

The British Invasion-sounding “She’s a Mover” is probably the oldest track on Radio City, possibly dating as far back as mid-to-late 1972. The looseness of the evening it was captured in is preserved in the recording, which ends with a jam. The odd feedback sounds came from waving a pair of headphones over a microphone. Andy Hummel later overdubbed a bass part, so he’s on the final version. Big Star took a stab at the song, but their rendering was shelved, as it was felt it didn’t have the spirit of the Dolby Fuckers’ take.