Lazy Album

Recently the Kaiser Chiefs released a new album, with a difference.  There were 20 tracks posted on their website.  Fans could pay £7.50 to select any ten tracks, in an order of their choice, and design their own album cover.

I am not a fan of this.

Part of producing an album, in my view, is not just producing the songs but working out the track order to make a complete work, and producing the artwork.  An album is more than a random list of songs, it is a list of songs selected in a certain order so that he album works as a whole.  The Kaiser Chiefs might think they’re being clever, I think they’re being lazy.

On a related note, one album I enjoy is Pushing the Senses by Feeder.  The track listing is as follows:

Feeling a Moment

Bitter Glass

Tumble and Fall

Tender

Pushing the Senses

Frequency

Morning Life

Pilgrim Soul

Pain on Pain

Dove Grey Sands

This album has plenty of good songs (including the outstanding Morning Life), and works well as a whole.

A few years ago, I recorded the album onto an mp3 CD to use in my car.  Bizzarely, the track order was lost and the songs were recorded In alphabetical order as follows:

Bitter Glass

Dove Grey Sands

Feeling a Moment

Frequency

Morning Life

Pain on Pain

Pilgrim Soul

Pushing the Senses

Tender

Tumble and Fall

The album in this order was vastly inferior to the original track listing.  Dove Grey Sands is a good closer, but not a good track two.  Feeling a Moment has an intro that only works as an opener.  Pain on Pain into Pilgrim Soul is incongruous.  I could go on.  It just doesn’t work.  Feeder wrote 10 good songs (well, really 9 good songs and one weaker song (Frequency)), but they also made the album greater than the sum of its parts with an appropriate track order.  Kaiser Chiefs have written twenty songs, but have failed to select about 10 that work together around a theme, have failed to produce a track order, and have failed to produce the album artwork.  It’s not postmodern, it’s just inadequate.