I'm a bit suspicious of the mindset that automatically views the original release of an album as the ultimate, sanctified version that should never be toyed with.
The best albums hang together as a whole, they're coherent and have a decided order. There's a beginning, middle and end. The album format has its own strengths, as opposed to the compilation or the single or the EP or the collection of archived material. What we’re talking about here is a pre-existing album with which the listener has built a relationship over time, which is then resold not only as a hybrid of original album and a compilation but as somehow better than the original. It’s the Star Wars Original Trilogy phenomena. Getting up and changing tracks or pressing stop only reinforces that this isn’t the same record you used to love.
Listening to a well paced album from start to finish contextualises songs that you might otherwise not enjoy. I own many albums that are more than the sum of their parts, and a major factor in that is that care and attention has been put into balancing the tracklisting. On reflection there is an analogy to the sacred in this process. A good album has the effect of *embiggening* the range of what you can appreciate. It changes the listener, rather than the listener merely playing their few favourites or being consumer hungry for quantity. Track order and a well judged choice of what to include and not include are vital in this.
Another facet of what makes music so enjoyable is that the object itself can be invested with meaning. Packaging, lyrics, artwork, credits, liner notes etc all go together to create an identity in you that is larger than the music. So I can sympathise with those who return to a much loved album only to find it uncannily different, changed, repackaged but supposedly somehow better than the record they once fetishized. In response to Rizla’s comment that many albums are thrown together with commercial concerns and released sometimes unfinished: it’s possible to fetishise anything.
(Occasionally there are exceptions. Some reissues have been done with such care that songs from the same sessions have been introduced within the track listing in a way that creates new but not necessarily inferior pacing. I’m also not suggesting that people who want more tunes for their cash are in the wrong: you can interact with music however you like. I’m just representing for listening habits that haven’t been given their due here.)
One of the most frequently lacking qualities in bands is a sense of when to stop, of being concise, of knowing what not to play. Too many albums lack cohesion, a sense that this suite is more than just a thrown together selection of what the artist has happened to write in a specific time-frame. Quantity is not always desirable, even if the quality matches what was originally included. As Stoatie says, you can always stick it on a second disc.
My band is halfway through the recording of an album at the moment. It’ll be about ten songs long, maybe forty minutes in length. On the strength of what we’ve done so far it’s going to be a cracker. You can bet your ass we’ll spend ages mixing, playing with artwork, design, picking brilliantly daft song titles, choosing the tracklisting. A crucial element of this is knowing when to stop before the pudding becomes over-egged, to be able to draw the line that says “It is finished.” Once it’s done you can listen to it however you like. If you want to stick songs on mixtapes, change the running order, stick it on shuffle, whatever: that’s cool. |
); This Charming Man and How Soon Is Now?, respectively. How Soon Is Now? totally messed with Meat Is Murder, especially on cassette, as it meant that side 1 was a good deal longer than side 2, but sticking This Charming Man onto The Smiths was, IMHO, a good thing, as the track wasn't on any other Smiths albums (apart from the session version on Hatful Of Hollow), and the album didn't really have that much of a flow to be ruined.