Album Out Now!

We are supposedly living in the golden age of singles.  Listeners nowadays mostly get their music from streaming services, no longer buy CDs, and mostly want to listen to playlists featuring singles from lots of artists that capture a particular vibe.  As I was preparing to release my music this summer, I read a bunch of books and blog posts about the modern music industry.  They all agreed that the best strategy is to release a new single every 6-8 weeks, year round, year after year, with no breaks.  Albums are an afterthought; nobody pays attention to them unless they are by megastars like Beyonce or Taylor Swift.  

Maybe I'm just old school, but I still think that albums are important.  I have never listened to a playlist or a mixtape in my life.  I sometimes listen to music on the radio, but most of the time I am listening to full albums, ideally in a single sitting.  I don't feel like I know an artist's music until I've listened to one or more of their albums multiple times.  

Why are albums important?  If you have 10 good songs recorded, why not just release 10 singles?  Why listen to an album all at once?  I have two answers.  

FIRST:  albums have room for a broader range of expression than singles.  Most successful singles have to fit a certain mold:  they should be short (2-4 minutes), energetic, immediately appealing, and danceable.  Lyrically they should be easy to follow and inoffensive--unless you are a hip-hop artist, in which case your lyrics must be hard-edged and use a lot of jargon to create a mystique.  

These were the rules back in the days of AM radio, but in the age of Spotify there is an additional rule, which is that your single's sound has to fit squarely into one or more high-traffic playlists, which usually specialize in narrow subgenres.  There are playlists that play jangle pop, and they only want music that sounds like Alvvays.  There are playlists that play dream pop, and they only want music that sounds like Beach House.  I love both of those bands, but I don't think slavishly copying an existing style is a way to make great music.  

Albums are where good musicians can spread out and make music in a variety of styles and moods.  I love the Beatles' singles, but some of their best songs were not cut out to be singles--“A Day in the Life” is too long, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is too downbeat, “Here, There and Everywhere” doesn't have much of a dance beat.   Elvis Costello is my favorite living songwriter, but most of his songs are too ornery and complex to succeed as singles (and he only made the top 40 a couple of times in his career).  

I did release three singles from my new album Midlife Crisis Vanity Project.  Two of them ("How the Hell" and “Replaced By Robots”) followed the rules, while the third ("Your Opinion") was too political and has gotten less attention (lesson learned).  But my favorite tracks on the album are probably “Subway” and “Wyoming”.  I didn't release “Subway” as a single because it's downbeat and because the lyrics are ironic (a fact that seems to have been lost on at least one reviewer, who thinks that the song is actually supposed to be a paean to Subway).  I didn't release “Wyoming” as a single because it's over 6 minutes long, and because lyrically it's a dystopian political ballad that requires careful listening to follow.  

SECOND:  an album can add up to more than the sum of its parts.  While most albums (including mine) are just a collection of unrelated songs, sometimes an album has an overarching theme that gives it an extra layer of gravitas.  This is most obvious for narrative albums like Tommy, The Wall, and American Idiot, but there are more subtle examples as well.  Consider Bob Marley's masterpiece Exodus.  Every track is perfect on its own terms, but the song placement creates a spiritual journey--side one features songs of struggle ("Natural Mystic", “The Heathen” and the title track), while side two focuses on love songs--first erotic love ("Jammin", “Waiting in Vain”) and finally universal love ("Three Little Birds", “One Love”).   Another example is the modern masterpiece Twin Fantasy by Car Seat Headrest.  The individual tracks are all great, but only by listening to the entire album can you hear the intricate pattern of linkages across songs--virtually every track refers to or is referenced by another track on the album, often in unexpected and exciting ways.   

So I will continue to treasure albums.  Now that I have tracks on Spotify, I have the privilege of creating my own “artist playlist”.  Mine is called “The Best Song Wasn't the Single” (borrowing a line from Frank Ocean's “Sweet Life”), and it features 100 percent killer album tracks that were never released as singles, from great bands and performers old and new, no more than one track per artist.  Give it a listen, and long live the album!

Speaking of albums…Here are the albums that have been in my CD case for the last couple of weeks: 

Alex G, God Save the Animals

Black Midi, Hellfire

The Band, Northern Lights, Southern Cross

Phoebe Bridgers, Punisher

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Face the Truth

Sigur Ros, With a Buzz In Our Ears We Play Endlessly (the one with the naked guys running on the cover)

Waxahatchee, Cerulean Salt

Weyes Blood, And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow

My normal CD listening habits were disrupted this month, for two reasons.  (1) My car hood got totalled by a flying metal object.  Fortunately nobody was hurt, but my car was in the shop for almost a month.  (2) I visited my Mom in Northern Michigan.  So I spent over a month in rental cars with no CD player.   

But all turned out well.  I was looking for a college radio station on the left of the FM dial and instead stumbled upon WTMD (89.7), an Adult Album Alternative (AAA) format station in the Baltimore area that I had not been aware of before.  I grew up listening to AAA stations like WXRT in Chicago and WFNX in Boston.  When I moved to Maryland in 1996, WHFS was the closest substitute, but when they converted to Latin music in 2005 I stopped listening to the radio.  (Yes, DC-101 was still around, but every time I listened to them over the years it seems their playlist was the same as it was in 1996.) 

So it was a pleasure to find WTMD, which says that “TMD” stands for “Total Music Discovery".  They operate out of Towson, so I supsect that originally TMD stood for “Towson, Maryland”.  In any case, they are listener supported , no commercials, and play lots of new indie music including music by Baltimore area bands.   

Alas I have never found an AAA station in Northern Michigan.   In my many years of driving in the Traverse City area, I have found sports radio, NPR stations playing classical music, pop stations, country stations, and classic rock stations that play Kid Rock at least once an hour.   So this time, I paid the rental company extra for satellite radio, and discovered SiriusXMU (channel 35).  They play new and classic music by underground and indie artists, and their definition of “indie” includes both bands on small labels and unsigned artists that have nothing more than a good song on Bandcamp.   They have half-hour “studio concerts” (Alex G was featured the week I was listening).  

I'm not going to stop listening to CDs in my car--I still think that once you've found someone you like, it makes sense to listen to a lot of their music in a focused, intentional way.  But it was good to be reminded that it's good to take a radio break every now and then (assuming you have a good station to listen to).  It's a great way to be introduced to new bands (or new-to-me, anyway).  I will definitely check out more of Michigander, Yot Club and Beirut, for example…and on the other hand, I learned about some much-hyped new bands that probably aren't worth my time, which is also useful to know before I plunk down money for a CD.  

Alright, I'm old school.  I still listen to albums all the way through, and most of the time I listen to them on CD in my car.  Yes, my car still has a CD player.  In fact, I bought my car (2019 Toyota Corolla) exactly BECAUSE it was one of the only cars available that had a CD player as a standard feature.  

So, if you want to know what I'm listening to at any given time, you need to know what's in my car's CD case.  I usually have about 10 albums in rotation.  If I already know an album well and just felt like listening to it, I will only listen to it once, but mostly I like to explore.  I will keep new albums in rotation for 4-6 weeks, until they are old friends.   Unless it annoys me so much that I can't make it through even a single listen.   Those albums are not mentioned below.  

If you are a boomer or GenXer, hopefully this list will give you some ideas of newer rock bands that you should check out, because rock and roll is not dead no matter what you hear.  If you are a Millenial or GenZ, hopefully you will be inspired to explore the great rock bands of the past.  

MAY 2023

1. The Fall, Bend Sinister (1986)
2. Snail Mail, Valentine (2022)
3. Alvvays (2014)
4. Mitski, Puberty 2 (2016)
5. Cate LeBon, Pompeii (2022)
6. The Guess Who, Canned Wheat (1969)
7. Beach House, Teen Dream (2010)
8. Car Seat Headrest, Twin Fantasy:  Face to Face (2018)
9. Big Thief, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (2022)
10. Soccer Mommy, Sometimes, Forever (2022)