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Puncture Repair
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- #1
- Posted: 07/05/2012 17:51
- Post subject: What aspects of an album are you a sucker for?
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What feature of an album will instantly make you award it points, regardless of the rest of it or the quality of the album?
Mine is an upbeat, "let's get this started" second song after what's often a great first track but isn't quite as to-the-point.
Arcade Fire are masters of this - especially Keep the Car Running after black mirror, which really just makes you want to hear what the rest of the album has to offer. Even the title of "Ready to Start" with the lyrics "Now I'm ready to start" make it clear that this is one of those seconds tracks. It's almost as though the first track was just a warm up - a stretch, but then the second track is the push to really get things going.
Other records that do this well include: Dog Man Star, Collapse into Now, For Emma Forever Ago, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and maybe even Revolver.
So, what are yours?
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Hayden
Location: CDMX
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- #2
- Posted: 07/05/2012 22:34
- Post subject:
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The cover 
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revolver94
professional dilettante
Gender: Male
Age: 29
Location: DC suburb
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- #3
- Posted: 07/05/2012 23:01
- Post subject:
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Any sort of vibe I get just by looking at the album that makes it feel cool. It can be a combination of the cover, the name of the album/artist, or other stray bits of information I've picked up. I've gotten into so much music just because I got a good vibe from it... well I guess it's mostly the cover, haha.
I found Exile in Guyville amongst a list of 90's albums on some random ass website, but the cover caught my eye, so I looked it up, saw it was critically reviewed and bought it. Now, it's one of my all time favorite albums. It seems like a total accident, though.
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Noise Pollution
Gender: Male
Age: 30
Location: Edmonton
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- #4
- Posted: 07/06/2012 01:18
- Post subject:
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Blues based guitar riffs played in a hard rock style
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RNFNR
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Happy
Gender: Male
Age: 29
Location: New Jersey
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- #5
- Posted: 07/06/2012 06:19
- Post subject:
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The last song has to be enjoyable. It's like the concluding paragraph of an essay in that if it isn't good, the rest will seem worse.
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Xavygravy
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- #6
- Posted: 07/06/2012 07:18
- Post subject:
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| Happy wrote: | | The last song has to be enjoyable. It's like the concluding paragraph of an essay in that if it isn't good, the rest will seem worse. |
Totally agree with this. I'm not a fan of "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" (although, everyone seems to think it's awesome), so even though the rest of the album is awesome, I rate it lower because it ends on a sour note, and that's what sticks with you (even if the average suggests it should be half a star higher). I guess it would also be the equivalent of sticking "Wild Honey Pie" after "Good Night" on The White Album. That would totally ruin it.
Research has even supported this. I read an article (find it yourself) about this experiment where patients recorded how much pain they felt during a non-anesthetized check-up (I forgot what), and were then asked how much pain they felt overall after it was over. The results showed that, even in patients who recorded very high levels of pain for the majority of the experiment, if the ending was relatively painless, their 'overall pain level' was significantly lower than the average. And same goes for the other way around (if it ended badly, then the overall pain level was significantly higher than the average). This just goes to show how much weight we put on how things end in terms of the overall experience.
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monosyllables
Gender: Male
Age: 33
Location: St. Louis, MO
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- #7
- Posted: 07/06/2012 07:59
- Post subject:
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I am an absolute sucker for certain chord progressions for some reason, and then other ones tend to irk me irrationally. I could listen to songs in that "Blitzkrieg Bop" A-D-E for DAYS, and that Phil Specter-prom night classic, G-Em-C-D (Notable for its use in "In the Aeroplane over the Sea"); sometimes I don't even realize it about a song that I've liked for a long time.
On the other side of the coin, it seems like Portugal. The Man continually has some certain chord change that just bugs the shit out of me, because it sounds like an overly-cheesy, "everybody-wave-your-hands-in-the-air-but-be-all-chill-about-it" ploy for quote-unquote epic'ness.
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Saoirse
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- #8
- Posted: 07/06/2012 08:08
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I'm always a sucker for a violin. Or a great female voice.
But for an album, I think a great song in the middle that just brings everything together without sucking the life out of the album is absolutely crucial for an album to go from good to great.
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Guest
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- #9
- Posted: 07/06/2012 09:27
- Post subject:
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| Hayden wrote: | | The cover |
^This.
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albummaster
Janitor
Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin
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- #10
- Posted: 07/06/2012 09:34
- Post subject:
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instrumental bridge tracks add something for me e.g. Embryonic Journey, Pet Sounds (title track), Voices of Old People (on Bookends) etc
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