Albums that are less or more "navigable"

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Because it is Loaded- loaded with hits!

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I hate to potentially interrupt a skot picture thread but I'm back to say: this is the man who may have the answer
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unfortunately, the opening post doesn't shed much light on the enigmatic thread title.

Ironically, this thread reminded me of your comment over on the Shiina Ringo thread:

shoso strip is a fantastic release.

once the individual songs take shape after a few listens, the album is really hard to stop listening to.

Not exactly the same issue, but a similar issue of sorting out songs, songs in the context of albums, etc. (I don't know if there really is any "etc." but I have to go to work.)

It's just a thread about good sequencing, isn't it?

haha rockist.. for me, the sequence of just about any album seems to make sense and become clearer after a number of listens. in the instance of shosou strip, the songs revealed themselves to be extremely good, while the pacing of the record is just about right with the last few tracks being amongst the standouts.

scik mouthy, i think i'm just struggling with the phrasing of the sentences.

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Yes, it's a thread about sequencing. To respond to Charlie's post, I think the idea that album sequences may make sense to the listener after X number of listens doesn't always solve the problem. The problem is whether those tracks that you might want to listen to individually end up feeling "accessible" to you or wheter, regardless of your understanding of the aesthetics of the album sequence, the tracks still feel mired in the pool of the album, thus making you less apt to listen to them.

I was just thinking about it with regard to the McCartney POX thread where I was thinking about my impressions of the Wild Life album and the first, self-titled solo album. For me, Wild Life is an album where every track has a kind of space to itself and separateness and I think this factor makes me more apt to actually take the record out and play some songs whereas I might like individual tracks on the McCartney album just as much but am less apt to take the record out and play songs on it.

The fact that Wild Life is an album with few tracks is obviously signficant. The "mire" often comes from too much information - at least for me. And I think this explains people's fondness for EPs and 45s, too.

Yeah I kind of feel like overlong and/or poorly sequenced albums can really ruin your impression of otherwise good songs. I kind of have a theory that it's impossible for double album to not feel 'filler-heavy' (don't get me wrong, many of them are), and probably wouldn't be described that way if the same songs were released as seperate albums a couple years apart.

Yeah I kind of feel like overlong and/or poorly sequenced albums can really ruin your impression of otherwise good songs.

Many, many examples of this in the 70-minute CD era. The Fall's _The Unutterable_ is virtually flawless for the first 9 tracks, then has just one good track from the last 6 should've-been-b-sides. Adrian Borland's _Cinematic_ would be much better at 10 tracks instead of 15. Surely there's been a thread highlighting the most egregious cases.

OK, now I understand. There are some tracks at the end of Ryan Adam's Gold that I couldn't tell you what they were, the album goes on for so long.

I grew up listening to the American Capitol editions of the early Beatles albums but I also had an import copy of Please Please Me. That's one fourteen track album where the tracks feel separate and "accessible" to me. I honestly think it has something to do with the gaps between tracks - there's about seven seconds of silence in between songs. The industry standard became much less silence in between tracks in the following years (up to the point where there's almost no space between songs on Sgt. Pepper).

So collection of songs vs cohesive narrative / statement?

I don't think it's always a case where trying to creative a cohesive narrative (or at least some sense of flow) is the thing causing the problem. I think it's more a matter of album feng shui, if you will. Why do I feel like I have "easier access" to tracks on The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall and Cerebral Caustic than I do with the albums that followed them (This Nation's Saving Grace and The Light User Syndrome)?

...or with The Infotainment Scan than with Middle Class Revolt, for that matter. Hey, there seems to be a pattern here with the Fall.

It could be all kinds of reasonings beyond simple sequencing. It could be the circumstances of your life when you listened to them first, it could be down to the mastering, it could be the core melodic / harmonic content of the individual songs, it could be down to how the tracklisting is written on the sleeve, whether it's numbered or whatever, or what the sleeve itself looks like on the cover....

I'm thinking about Camper Van Beethoven's Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, an album that feels pretty decent for me as far as the "accessibility of tracks" goes. I could say that has something to do with the fact that the cover has those individual stamps for each song, but I still think it's more an issue of the sequencing. It's hard to imagine a cover that would have detracted greatly from this sense of the album.

tim, now you put it that way (and i too am finally coming to terms with your question, which is a very multi-layered one) i'll concede that there are many, many records that i never quite get to hear properly because they are simply too exhausting. there might be some good tracks right at the end, but i'll never be able to give them their due time because the album just wears me out. ryan adams' 'gold' is indeed a good example. it's damn near impossible to make it to the end of that one, particularly when you've gotta contend with tracks that exceed 9 minutes ('nobody girl')

In the case of "McCartney" and "Wild Life", the thing to do is play "Maybe I'm Amazed" and "Junk" from the former and possibly "Dear Friend" from the latter. As for the rest, listen to some of his way superior later albums instead.

GEE THANKS GEIR.

I Like "Wild Life"

Maybe because it was one of the first albums I owned.

When Blur came out with "Music is my radar", I thought "oy oy, "Mumbo"!"

(tho "Dear Friend" is too long and dull)