How often does the pontification of some music journalist include something along the lines of this little gem: “In the download age, the album is dead?”
It seems to have become something of a truism these days. The logic runs like this: when people can download any song they want, the biggest hits from a new record fly off the electronic shelves while the rest of an album’s tracks lie dormant. The consequence of this is, of course, that artists have no reason to continue thinking of their work in terms of whole albums like they did back in the days of CDs and vinyl discs.
Let’s consider.
Sales and everything else aside, is the album artistically static in 2009? Have artists really stopped paying attention to album structure in the age of the MP3?
If the album is dead, that would be news to quite a few artists. Take, for example, Green Day (I’ve focused on their work in a previous column), whose recent overwrought concept albums have brought them rising like a phoenix from the ashes of critical acclaim into the land of teenage punk idolatry.
Of course, music snobs have little taste for Green Day’s more recent work, but the California rockers aren’t the only act treading into concept album territory recently.
Despite the threat that Colin Meloy’s cutesy eccentricities will cause his work to creatively implode, the latest effort from indie darlings The Decemberists, “The Hazards of Love,” is nothing if not an album-length work. Even with less-than-enthusiastic reviews from big publications like Spin and Blender magazines, the album has been selling well — and selling as an album.
If there is any doubt that Meloy and company conceive of “Hazards” as a complete work, that ought to be laid to rest by the structure of performance on the band’s most recent tour — every concert includes “The Hazards of Love” performed in its entirety, guest vocalists and all.
Certainly, the band’s propensity for esoteric themes and elevated diction has reached a sort of zenith on “Hazards,” but it is also a bold new step for the normally mellow acoustic rockers. A big sweeping saga of forbidden love, its fauns, forest queens and hard rock riffs seem to belong more in the oeuvre of Led Zeppelin than any indie rock group. If the only way to succeed in today’s music economy is to produce digital singles, then Meloy certainly hasn’t gotten the memo.
Still, where is 2009’s “Dark Side of the Moon?” The muddled storyline of “The Hazards of Love” is interesting, but it can’t hold a candle to many more inspired concept albums.
Perhaps it is unfair, though, to compare the work of today’s artists with these classics. Ennio Morricone’s “The Ecstasy of Gold” is one of the most transcendent pieces of orchestral music ever written for film, but no one would claim that it has any business alongside Beethoven’s Fifth. These are two different pieces of work from two very different moments in time.
Maybe it’s time to say the same things about the album. To say that artists are no longer thinking in terms of the album seems presumptuous. Great musicians have never been known to create their art based on the most effective economic model.
Certainly, comparing the work of Meloy with the artistry of, for example, Pete Townsend leaves the former looking wanting, but it doesn’t change the fact that “The Hazards of Love” is a pretty damn good album (I’m not sure I can say the same for Green Day’s most recent, “Twentieth Century Breakdown”).
Let’s declare a moratorium on pronouncing the death of the album right now. Give it time. Perhaps Meloy still has a Quadrophenia in him. The next “After The Gold Rush” could be just over the horizon. In the meantime, let’s try to enjoy today for what it is: a time when there’s way more music than ever to discover.
Sure, the hit machine is churning out download singles by the thousands, but there are real artists out there, working on albums of real beauty. In fact, some are actively resisting the digital single. Look at the concept album. Look at the movement back toward vinyl releases (in some ways the ultimate affirmation of the album as an art form).
Don’t listen to the prophets of doom and gloom. Get out there and give something a spin. Because that’s what will ultimately save the album when it needs help: you.
You can reach this columnist at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
