Albums that should be heard straight through?

And yet, parts of The Wall are so cheesy I can't get through them.

I'll take DSOTM any day.

 

DSOTM may well be the better album, I just never really paid too much attention to its overall arc/themes. This is illuminating, will need to grab a good recording and listen to the lyrics.

 

Any Tool album. Always beginning to end.

 

I took the wife and kids to an Austrailian Pink Floyd concert a few years back and the first half of the show was The Wall in it's entirety. 2/3 of the way through the album I look over and my wife is balling her eyes out. Apparently that album is more than a collection of songs to some people.

I never really listened to that album much because it was on the PLAY LIST when I DJ'd during my early college days. There wasn't much out musically then so when I needed something to play off the PLAY LIST is was either something from The Wall or Zep's In Through The Out Door so I really got burnt out on those two albums. In fact this was one of the few CD's that I ever thought about selling.

After that concert I started listening to The Wall from beginning to end. There's way more to it than I previously thought. I used to play bass/drums so I tended to ignore lyrics in those days too so maybe that could be why I missed its meaning.

 

I generally prefer most albums in their entirety when I can get enough uninterrupted time for them- maybe I'm odd.

 

Nope. That's how I listen to music. I have Foobar set to select albums randomly.

Generally, if an album isn't worth my attention from beginning to end, then it isn't worth my attention at all.

 

That's why Best of compilations can be nice, but in my experience they tend to include "remastered" versions that are usually brickwalled.

 

Ahh, but while The Wall makes excellent use of the medium's ability to convey the cyclical nature of stardom, exemplified in the suggestion that Pink is doomed to merely go through fits of alienation, estrangement, and personal decay (I'm being deliberately snobby sounding ), the album just isn't that cohesive sounding.

I have to admit that The Wall is actually tied for my favourite Pink Floyd album, right up there with WYWH, DSotM being a strong second/third. The only reason I specified DSotM was that, sonically, it flows a hell of a lot better than The Wall, which tends to be a bit too narcissistically self-important, haha.

 

One of those albums which is greater than the sum of its parts. I was going to make that a youtube link, but lossy compression was making me a sad panda, applied to such a lovely thing.

 

I love that album. Like a lot of later Sinatra, it's a beautiful recording and he's in top form. I read so many praises of "Songs for Swingin' Lovers" but that album is just awful. His timing is off, it's obvious from later material he decided to sing those songs differently and the way he ended up singing them is just so much better.

 

Whoa! Nelly is a concept album you need to hear all the way through.

 

I'm a huge Marillion fan also. Clutching at Straws and Misplaced Childhood are both brilliant albums. Well produced too - give the subs a good workout.

Another band whose albums should be listened to in sequence is The Alan Parsons Project, because they have a theme and tell a story - Eve (broken relationships) and Turn of a Friendly Card (gambling addiction) are two that I really enjoy.

 

Yeah, I need to get more marillion. Also, is your user name a reference to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness?

 

Indirectly yes, by way of Marlon Brando's character in Apocalypse Now which is based on it.

 

In jazz, a few from memory, but I listen to pretty much everything end-to-end:

Miles: "In a Silent Way" (just two long tracks)
Coltrane: "A Love Supreme"
Dave Holland Quartet: "Conference of the Birds"
Vijay Iyer: "Solo"
Wadada Leo Smith: "America's National Parks"
David Virelles: "Mbókò"
Gonzalo Rubalcaba: "Faith"