A Thinking Reed

The double album – a blight on rock?

Written by

Lee M.

in

I’ve never quite been able to make up my mind whether the Clash’s London Calling is truly one of the greatest rock albums ever, or if it just misses being so by overreaching a bit. I mean, you’ve got, what, twelve songs in a row that are just killer, but once you get toward the end things start to get a bit threadbare, don’t they? Does anyone think “Lover’s Rock”, for instance, is a great song?

Maybe the double album is something to be avoided altogether? I have a hard time thinking of anyone who’s pulled it off sucessfully. Over the Rhine, who I love, didn’t quite do it with their Ohio – but I think you could’ve culled one really good album from that. By contrast, this year’s Drunkard’s Prayer has no filler whatsoever (though perhaps the extended saxaphone solo on “Little did I know” I could’ve done without).

But I’ll be happy to take nominations for double albums that are putative counterexamples to my thesis (and, no, the White Album doesn’t cut it either).

Comments

4 responses to “The double album – a blight on rock?”

  1. Joshie

    It’s interesting, because although LC was a 2 LP set originally, it is now short enough to fit all on one CD. So while it began as a double album, it no longer is. Groups routinely now put out albums as long or longer than LC.

    That said, I do agree with you that albums of 70+ minutes of music are a bit much. Blood Sugar Sex Magic was a great album but it wnet on WAY too long and that ended up making it much less great than it could have been. Def Leppard’s Hysteria falls into that category too. Yeah I liked Def Leppard, shut up.

    With LC I think its kind of a close call, though. While songs like Lover’s Rock and Koka Kola are pretty much filler, they do showcase Joe’s humerous side, something that didn’t come out very clearly on a lot of their studio recordings. The Card Cheat and The Four Horseman do kinda grow on you after a while, I’ve found.

    Their next album, Sandinista! is a text book example of the album that was way way way too long and self indulgent. They had enough good material for one disc and stretched it out onto 3 of them.

    Reply
  2. graham old

    “and, no, the White Album doesn’t cut it either”

    What?! You been drinking or summint? 😉

    Reply
  3. jack perry

    What, you’ve never heard of Pink Floyd? The Wall. Delicate Sound of Thunder. Pulse.

    Don’t know if the last two count, since they were “greatest hits” collections. Still, I thought they were great albums.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous

    I rarely listen to rock anymore, so I don’t know the albums you refer to — indeed, I’ve only vaguely heard of the groups themselves and would not recognize a piece by them if I were somehow confronted with it. But I am old enough to remember when Blonde on Blonde was released. As I recall, that was a double album. As I further recall, the standard was high and it was maintained throughout.

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