20-10-2016, 20:53
A "concept album" does not have to be prog rock, nor does a prog album have to be a concept album, but prog and concept albums go together like... you know what.
There are what I call true concept albums, where the entire album, or most of it, is telling some kind of story or setting a kind of scene. Examples include:
The Moody Blues - Days of Future Passed
The Beach Boys - SMiLE
Pink Floyd - The Wall
Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
Steven Wilson - Hand. Cannot. Erase.
plus many others already listed in this thread.
Then you get what I call "theme" albums - not so much presenting a single narrative as being a set of songs with similar mood and similar themes, to give a particular mood to the entire album. "Murder Ballads", by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, already mentioned by someone else here, is a perfect example. Steven Wilson's album "The Raven that Refused to Sing (and other stories)" is another good example: six songs, all of which are some kind of ghost story, but the songs bear no real relation to one another. Midnight Oil did a number of albums like this: Diesel and Dust has many songs about relations between black and white Australians, Red Sails In the Sunset addresses issues of nuclear energy and nuclear war, etc.
When I listen to an album, the music is the most important thing to me. I can happily enjoy an album of completely unrelated songs, if the songs are good songs. However, if the whoie thing feels like a well executed concept or theme, that can enhance enjoyment - the icing on the cake, as it were.
My criterion for classifying an album as a concept album or a theme album: A concept album would lose a lot by playing the tracks in random order rather than the assigned running order. Days of Future Passed would sound ridiculous heard as afternoon followed by morning, then night, then evening. With a theme album, it might not matter so much - though that depends on the nature of the music rather than any lyrical content. It would hardly matter which murder ballad you heard before which other murder ballad.
There are what I call true concept albums, where the entire album, or most of it, is telling some kind of story or setting a kind of scene. Examples include:
The Moody Blues - Days of Future Passed
The Beach Boys - SMiLE
Pink Floyd - The Wall
Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
Steven Wilson - Hand. Cannot. Erase.
plus many others already listed in this thread.
Then you get what I call "theme" albums - not so much presenting a single narrative as being a set of songs with similar mood and similar themes, to give a particular mood to the entire album. "Murder Ballads", by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, already mentioned by someone else here, is a perfect example. Steven Wilson's album "The Raven that Refused to Sing (and other stories)" is another good example: six songs, all of which are some kind of ghost story, but the songs bear no real relation to one another. Midnight Oil did a number of albums like this: Diesel and Dust has many songs about relations between black and white Australians, Red Sails In the Sunset addresses issues of nuclear energy and nuclear war, etc.
When I listen to an album, the music is the most important thing to me. I can happily enjoy an album of completely unrelated songs, if the songs are good songs. However, if the whoie thing feels like a well executed concept or theme, that can enhance enjoyment - the icing on the cake, as it were.
My criterion for classifying an album as a concept album or a theme album: A concept album would lose a lot by playing the tracks in random order rather than the assigned running order. Days of Future Passed would sound ridiculous heard as afternoon followed by morning, then night, then evening. With a theme album, it might not matter so much - though that depends on the nature of the music rather than any lyrical content. It would hardly matter which murder ballad you heard before which other murder ballad.