Albums that should be heard straight through?

Ray LaMontagne ... Ouroboros

 

Blind Guardian - Nightfall in Middle Earth
The Ocean - Pelagial
Pain of Salavation - BE

But in general I can think of a lot of prog/art rock/metal albums that are best listened to in order. The two newest Xanthochroid albums should be listened to in order and back to back. A bunch of albums from The Dear Hunter are concept albums all tied together.

 

Just listened to Jason Isbell's 'The Nashville Sound' straight through twice, and it's got a very nice emotional arc to the sequence.

 

Slough Feg: Traveller
for sure

 

This was also my thought when I saw this thread.
I took a history of popular music class in college and we covered Sinatra’s “In The Wee Small Hours” as the first pop Long Play record and making use of this new format, it was the first concept album. A great listen especially late a night with a glass of wine.

 

I think any album where the artist has some control over production deserves to be heard straight through. Bands created by record labels/purely for profit probably care less about song order and have filler songs added to make the album long enough to be worth buying for the intended audience. Otherwise, I think most bands put a good amount of thought into song order. Even if an album isn't written as a straight through story or concept, it's usually written during a limited time/emotional space and the song order is curated to have the best effect.

 

Abbey Road, Sgt. Peppers.

 

I'm going to add in every Sigur Ros album, but this one especially:

 

Kate Tempest - Everybody Down

Tells a story from beginning to end which weaves the lives of several characters together. She also released it in novel form, but I find the album far more compelling.

 

Talk Talk: Spirit of Eden...very similar to The Wall in it's presentation.

 

Kamelot tells the story of Faust across two of their albums, Epica & Black Halo if your into metal (power/prog/symphonic). It's actually not cheesy either like a lot of metal story concept albums.

Moonspell just came out with an album called 1755 that covers the devastating earthquake that hit Lisbon that year. Entirely in Portuguese though. It's pretty good if your into that sort of metal.

 

EVERY. SINGLE. PINK FLOYD ALBUM. EVER.
Same for Massive Attack and Led Zeppelin albums.

Here is my all time favorite album of all time.. and yes it should be listened to in its entirety or not at all IMO





Honestly with the advent of $0.99 cds at thrift shops I make it a point to listen to every single cd I purchase before I either decide to keep or sell (on DISCOGS). Rarely do I skip songs. Yes that means I have a cd player in my car and in my shower as well. Sad to say my podcast listening is reduced to dog walking now

Best,

Paul

 

It's not the best record ever, but Randy Newman's Faust is definitely meant to be played all the way through.

 

Agreed. Individual tracks just don't make sense on Dark Side of The Moon.

Carnival of The Animals by Camille-Saints Saens.

 

This is all great...so much new (to me) music to check out this year!

 

...we came in?



See, I'd say that The Wall has a much more cast-iron story arc/structure..



So this is where...

 

I ditched my Operation Mindcrime CD some time ago, was the remastered version which I couldn't really listen to. Will need to track down one of the original pressings, like I did for Empire (which I love).

My general assumption of artists, like the Eagles, in the 70's/80's is that they laid down tracks in a deliberate order (with it being inconvenient to skip around on vinyl and cassette).

 

Yeah, The Wall is pretty much the only Floyd that I listen to straight through, apart from concert recordings. "Pulse" isn't that highly regarded but I don't mind it, and the second disc is them playing DSOTM.