So the other day I pulled out an album I hadn't listened to in a couple years: Interiors, the 1997 album by Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard's side project, Brad. And I let the first five songs play, and I said to myself, "My gosh, this album is just about perfect."
And it is, really. The album opens with the shoulda-been-a-Pearl-Jam-song, but-it's-too-poppy "Secret Girl," then shifts abruptly into the swinging coffeehouse soul of "The Day Brings," some epic meter-shifting album rock ("Lift"), folk-funk ("I Don't Know"), and then something that sounds sort of like what Nick Drake would have sounded like if he'd lived long enough to become a Goth ("Upon My Shoulders"). That's as good a run of five songs as any other band has ever put on record.
And the rest of the album is just thiiiiiiis close to being completely unlistenable, a bunch of arty post-punk garbage.
Why couldn't they have stopped at five songs, called it an EP, and left it at that? Why ruin the potential of five great songs by not bothering to write the rest of the album? It's still a mystery to me. Sure, Brad had about as much potential as Tin Machine or the Dukes of Stratosphear, but still . . .
Other "quit while you're ahead" albums I've enjoyed half of include Wilco's A.M. (starts with a Murderer's Row of five genre-defining songs, then dissolves into nothingness), the Style Council's Confessions of a Pop Group (leave out "The Gardener of Eden," and it's no worse than any other Style Council album), and Aztec Camera's High Land, Hard Rain (I always stop listening after "Lost Outside The Tunnel").
Originally posted at The Bemusement Park.
Article comments
1 - olorin took
"...no worse than any other style council album"?
surely you meant to write "as brilliant as any other style council album, excepting large parts of 'the cost of loving' maybe, but then that was pretty brilliant in parts..."
2 - Mark Hasty
A lot of people (mostly those who didn't like the Style Council to begin with) have slagged "Confessions" for being self-indulgent and boring. I've read more than one review which has even called it the worst Style Council album. I don't think it's all that bad, personally; I've owned it since 1990 and still listen to it every couple months.
Anyway, that's why I said "no worse than any other Style Council album." It was not meant to imply that all Style Council albums are bad. I should have written that more clearly.
3 - Eric Olsen
great topic Mark - springing immediately to mind, side 1 and the first song of side 2 (on vinyl) of Roxy Music's Flesh and Blood are as good as anything they ever did (and they are just about my favorite), but the rest of side 2 is like stepping off a cliff.
Springsteen's The River should have been boiled down to a single record
The list is almost endless - thanks!
4 - entasmiquity
I would add U2's Zooropa to the list.