Choosing probably the most weird idea albums isn’t simple, because the most traditional, beloved idea albums are themselves fairly weird. In spite of everything, what may very well be stranger than two full LPs a couple of handicapped child who turns into the brand new Messiah, simply because he’s nice at enjoying pinball? Or a double-album with 4 20-minute items based mostly on Shastric scriptures? However these unlikely setups didn’t maintain The Who’s Tommy and Sure’ Tales From Topographic Oceans from changing into classics of the style.
After Tommy, no plotline for a thematic album might probably be too outlandish. However no one pushed it additional than Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, whose lyrics have been largely written by Peter Gabriel. Surreal and dark-humored, it’s basically a coming-of-age story seen via a darkish crystal: the hero is Rael, a Puerto Rican graffiti artist who’s sucked right into a mythic netherworld the place numerous trials await, together with his seduction by three lizard-women, castration afterward, and the rescue of his brother from a waterfall. Genesis made all of it resonate with a number of the loveliest tunes and grandest instrumental stretches of their catalogue, and Gabriel selected to wrap up the entire saga with one of the vital splendidly terrible puns ever labored right into a lyric. Far be it from us to cite it right here.
Prog rock is ceaselessly related to idea albums. Generally the ideas have been pretty all the way down to earth, like literature (Camel’s The Snow Goose), divorce (Peter Hammill’s self-lacerating Over), or politics (Light Large’s still-resonant The Energy & The Glory). However when it got here to conceptualizing, Gong have been off on one other planet – the legendary Planet Gong to be actual, residence of pothead pixies who cruise the galaxies of their flying teapots. The band’s mastermind, the late Daevid Allen, had a peculiar mixture of spirituality and whimsy that blossomed on Radio Gnome Invisible, prog’s first three-album trilogy (the person volumes have been Flying Teapot, Angels Egg, and You. And in case you couldn’t comply with Allen’s muse, Steve Hillage’s guitar solos have been each bit as cosmic.
However idea albums didn’t belong to proggers alone. Ray Davies wrote all of them via the 70s, and the “koncept Kinks” interval included gems like Preservation Acts 1 and 2 (whose villain, Mr. Flash, is a shady land developer who involves run a rustic – that will by no means actually occur, wouldn’t it?). Earlier on, nonetheless, he scored an actual coup with Lola Vs Powerman And The Moneygoround, his private screed in opposition to the music business. A key second within the plot comes when the hero scores a giant hit single – after which we hear The Kinks’ soon-to-be smash, “Lola.” So the album was successfully written round a success music that hadn’t occurred but, and the entire idea would have failed if “Lola” had flopped. However Davies clearly knew a winner when he had one.
In case you have been a Neil Younger fan in 1982, simply think about the shock whenever you purchased residence Trans – Younger’s first, and largely solely, tour into techno music and futuristic lyrical themes. A lot of the music was recognizably Neil Younger; what weirded followers out was the best way he used a Vocoder to make his voice unrecognizable. However Trans would have made good sense if Younger had defined it on the time: it was impressed by the gadgets he was utilizing to speak together with his disabled son, so, in that context, a number of the songs – just like the love music to a bit of “Transformer Man” – are fairly touching. Hassle is that Younger wasn’t speaking on the time, so many listeners have been simply confounded.
Nonetheless not weird sufficient? Listed here are a number of conceptual masterstrokes from totally different eras of pop:
The Turtles: … Current The Battle Of The Bands (1968)
After Sgt. Pepper, each pop group needed to do an idea album, even High 40 bands who ought to have recognized higher. The Turtles did theirs with tongue firmly in cheek, masquerading as 12 totally different teams. On “Food” they’re the chubby Bigg Brothers, singing a brownie recipe whose key ingredient is buried within the lyric: “Two squares of dark chocolate/Walnuts, pot, and sugar…”
Stevie Marvel: Journey By The Secret Life Of Vegetation (1979)
Wherein Stevie Marvel spends two LPs telling us what crops are considering. Musically it’s usually good – we all the time knew he might write a symphony, and this was the closest he bought. However to name it an sudden follow-up to Songs In The Key Of Life can be an understatement.
The Residents: Business Album (1980), God In Three Individuals (1988)
The Residents make nearly nothing however weird idea albums, so we provide two choices. New converts can take a look at the very accessible Business Album, with 40 ridiculously catchy songs, every exactly one minute lengthy. For the much less faint-hearted, God In Three Individuals tells the perverse story of a religion healer and his relationship with two Siamese twins.
Camper Van Beethoven: New Roman Occasions (2004)
CVB have been no strangers to elaborate jokes: after reuniting in 2003 they launched a newly recorded, song-for-song cowl of Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk and handed it off as an archival tape. Their official reunion album was this epic, which mixed their normal world-punk music and absurd humor with real, terrorist-era dread. The most effective joke is one which solely copy editors will get: the duvet textual content of New Roman Occasions is typeset in Occasions New Roman.
Julian Cope: Peggy Suicide (1991)
Cope’s explicit model of cerebral psychedelia will be robust to decipher. However on this epic double album it was very a lot price it. Whereas the lyrics soak up his acid-drenched musings on faith, ecology, and the well being of the planet, the music seems like a prototype for 90s Britpop.
Rush: Counterparts (1993)
After the sci-fi epics and the later thematic albums, the one surprising factor Rush might do was subject an album about love and intercourse – topics that, with few exceptions (notably “Entre Nous,” on Everlasting Waves) they’d prevented just like the plague. On Counterparts you even had brainiac lyricist Neil Peart pulling a naughty double entendre, “Stick It Out.” Coupled with the grunge-era power-trio sound, Counterparts was so regular for a Rush album that it was downright bizarre.
Garth Brooks: In The Life Of Chris Gaines (1999)
Tied to a film that by no means bought made, Garth’s model of a pop album – in reality, not 1,000,000 miles from his model of a rustic album – confused followers on the lookout for a Garth Brooks file, not an Australian alter ego with a soul patch.
The Fiery Furnaces: Rehearsing My Choir (2005)
Siblings Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger made a number of the extra imaginative indie-rock of the 00s, with no lack of prog influences. However they outdid themselves with this one, the place they wrote of an outdated lady’s reflections on her life – and introduced of their grandmother to do many of the vocals.
Having come this far, we have to point out a extra elusive album that could be probably the most off-the-wall idea ever devised: Rock & Roll Is Disco by the Half-Time Christians, a 1984 launch on Jello Biafra’s Various Tentacles imprint. True to their title, the band devoted half of its one album to songs about theories of Christianity… and the opposite half to songs about bowling. True, anyone might have thought to do this – however no one else did.
On the lookout for extra? Try the finest idea albums that can blow your thoughts.
