We were supposed to fight for people who couldn’t fight for themselves: In defence of the shorter album

At this time of the year there are so many album releases it can often be hard to keep up. Will the long awaited new Augie March effort carry the woozy charm of yesteryear? Can an album of duets between P!nk and Dallas Green actually work? What pish recording artist will phone in a Christmas record?

Speaking of phoning it in, I was struck by this review of the new album by The Beautiful Girls.

Now Ash Goldberg and the musical fourth estate at “themusic.com.au” are entitled to their opinion. With a web site name so commanding, they almost demand to be read. But Mr Goldberg, if you are going to do a takedown piece on an album, try and stretch yourself and use more than 100 words.

I realise my last comment is extremely hypocritical for 2 reasons:

1. I once submitted a review of Love by The Beatles using no words, just a picture of a man flogging a dead horse. Possibly justified.

2. I also used to contribute reviews written in Haiku (which, in the age of Twitter, is cherry ripe for a comeback).

I also realise Mr Goldberg’s review would have originally run in the street press edition which would be very limited with space. But it is a bit rich to employ the line, “Dancehall Days mightn’t be worth the purchase price”, when the rag the review appears in isn’t worth the purchase price.

Astounding considering it is free.

Now I am not here to defend Mat McHugh and The Beautiful Girls. Mat is a big enough boy and he can take care of himself. Instead, I am here to champion something that has been getting a bad rap for far too long: the short album.

Consensus would have it that most albums at least break into the double digits in terms of the number of tracks. This harks back to the start of the 12 inch vinyl album where five tracks was the perfect number to fit on each side. So, unless you were a Prog Rock band or the Allman Brothers, most artists had at least 10 tracks.

Then the Compact Disc was invented and all understanding of quality was thrown out the window. All of a sudden, the public was treated to bloated albums as if Tom Clancy had turned his attention to music.

Then digital files happened and we now have almost as many exclusive bonus tracks as we do regular tracks, or at least it feels that way. My beef with bonus tracks has already been documented so let’s instead focus on the album proper.

In his review, Goldberg laments the length of Dancehall Days at only 9 tracks (Or 8 if you don’t count the 20 second introduction of Tibetan chanting which Goldberg equates to Bad Slipknot).

This however betrays the cardinal rule of savvy artistry: Always leave them wanting more (Or, at least, exactly enough).

Somehow along the way, artists lost sight of telling a particular story or accentuating a theme.

Take the following albums as examples of great storytelling:

- Astral Weeks by Van Morrison

- Horses by Patti Smith

- Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen

- What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye

- Led Zeppelin IV by Led Zeppelin

None of these required ten tracks to tell their story.

Before someone gets a little shouty, the above list is not to suggest that Dancehall Days belongs in the same pantheon. Simply that if we are making decisions on purchasing an album based on the number of tracks, then we are making the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons.