People can talk all they want about modern music versus old sounds. They can also talk about the evils of the big corporate record labels in the day versus the whole do it yourself approach. The truth is, a lot of what they say is true – but here, for my money is the biggest thing that the labels did for music and is lacking today and the biggest reason that older albums are often superior to modern self-produced ones – pacing.
In the old days of the major labels controlling the music you had producers who were professionals in charge of helping artists craft their albums. Sure, there were times when the producers really overstepped their bounds and changed the sound of the band. That was bad. But for my money the one thing producers were good at was maintaining the pacing of the album. The musicians tend to be too close to the music to be unbiased about it. That’s where the producer came in. They understood that you need an ebb and flow to make an album work. They also understood that putting too many songs that sound similar together creates a boring album when just moving tracks around can create a better flow and a more interesting disc.
Engineers could really have benefited from an old school producer. There’s not a bad song on this disc. The problem is, all the music in the first half is quite a bit too samey, while the second half has all the stuff that varies from the formula. Had they alternated between the more standard and the more creative the disc would have flowed better. So, what we’re left with is a good collection of great songs that had it been put together differently would have been a great collection of great songs. Overall the music is a blend of modern and psychedelic – Pink Floyd and Radiohead. Of course, that’s over-simplified, but the track by track reviews should help to sort that.
This review is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: 2010 Volume 1 at lulu.com/strangesound.