What Makes A Perfect Album?

Take a second and think about your favorite albums. Consider all the elements of those albums and reflect momentarily on what about them makes their respective discs great. Is it the crystal clear production? Is one particular instrument/member doing something truly innovative throughout the tracks? Perhaps your enjoyment of the album is something less technical. Maybe you simply like each album because it gets you off in an indescribable fashion, like only music can.

Now think about those albums and ask, of those albums, how many of them are perfect? Perfection is a hard thing to define. Would you even know where to start when classifying, then categorizing that list of favorites into an elite group of immaculate hymns? I recently contemplated this very subject.

This is what I came up with..

Obviously perfection, and the guidelines that define it, are subjective. Every person’s standards of perfection are going to be met by varying qualifications. Johann Nikolaus Forkel, one of the first musicologists and the first biographer of Bach, stresses that “musical perfection is dependent on notational perfection”. This is, of course, a much more technical definition and a more classical approach than is required for these modern times. All contemporary music, at some level, acknowledges the laws of composition and adheres to them. So a song or album simply being sound in notation doesn’t exactly widdle the field down much. What we need then is to address the ethos, the cultural relevance of the music under scrutiny.

But there’s an inherent problem with addressing cultural relevance in American society. America’s cultural appreciation is “15 minutes” long. The most popular of songs are hits for the month they’re on the radio, after which the general public moves on. The crafting of these pop songs rarely takes innovation into consideration or creativity for that matter. This is one of the many reasons why most music aficionados don’t have much appreciation for pop music and the one-hit wonders the genre produces.

So let’s move past society’s musical disposition and focus on the individual. When we do this, we’re immediately faced with an unlimited number of reasons why someone may like a particular song or album. You can’t measure sentimental value or emotional involvement with music. In fact, most people can’t tell you on a purely instrumental level why a particular beat or riff strikes their fancy. Most non-musicians will just tell you that it simply does.

Welcome back to square one.

Perfection, apparently, truly is subjective. We can attempt to define it in technical terms but when it’s all said and done: you are left to your own definitions of what “perfect” is and how it applies to music. While I was spending so much time philosophizing about the subject, I managed to compile some qualifications of my own:

Firstly, every song on the album has to be enjoyable, meaning I’m never inclined to skip a track. This excludes skit tracks, silent tracks, or any other non-musical tracks. Each song must be as enjoyable as its predecessor. This is the most important factor for me on whether or not an album is perfect. It’s also the first hurdle that most of my favorite albums trip up on.

Secondly, the lyrics (assuming that the albums in question have them) must be intelligent and purposeful. They don’t have to be Dylan but they must supplement the songs/album. There’s nothing worse than really liking a song/album and then finding out later on that the lyrics are butt. In order for an album to be perfect, the lyrics must compliment it.

Thirdly, the production quality must be congruent with the overall concept of the album. What this means is, the production must also compliment the music, songs, and album. If after you’ve listened to the album, you’re left with a “man that would be great if the mix wasn’t so muddy”, then the album isn’t perfect (even if it isn’t necessarily the musicians’ faults). Again, this doesn’t mean that the production levels have to be perfect (as with King’s X’s Dogman). They simply must match the feel of the band’s music. If you’re listening to Eyehategod, chances are you don’t want pristine tone and defined mids. So a muddy, sludgy mix is actually perfect in this case. However, if I can’t hear every note that David Gilmour plays on Animals, then the album suffers a slight.

So what albums meet this heavily thought out criteria? I’m glad you asked:

 

Tool- Undertow (all the greatness of Tool before they learned how to mess with your emotions)

Isis- In the Absence of Truth (the most perfect album out of all of them)

Galactic- Ruckus (jazz for the future)

10 Years- The Autumn Effect (I know, I know. But there’s no explaining some things.)

Zao- Self Titled (Zao runs the spectrum and it pays off big)

Temple of the Dog- Self Titled (I don’t know if they intended this album to be this good)

Stone Temple Pilots- Purple (I don’t know if they intended this album to be this dark)

Queens of the Stone Age- Era Vulgaris (Homme, firing on all cylinders)

Pantera- The Great Southern Trendkill (the toughest album, maybe, of all time)

Helmet- Betty (what happened after this one?)

Filter- Short Bus (same with these guys)

Lamb of God- Ashes of the Wake (politically motivated and brutal as hell. Fantastic)

Acid Bath- When the Kite String Pops (scariest album ever. Period. Underlined.)

Alice in Chains- Jar of Flies (even back when this album was released, it was the flower growing atop Layne’s grave)

 

The thing that really killed me during this analysis was the absence of some of my favorite bands. No way would I rank 10 Years anywhere near my top 30 bands. But, for what they offered on that album, it was perfect. I wanted so badly for Crowbar, Faith No More, Miles Davis, Radiohead, or the most important album of my life: Pink Floyd’s The Wall (thanks “Vera” ) to make the cut. But rules are rules. So while this certainly isn’t a list of my favorite bands, it is a comprehensive list of the albums in my collection that I consider to be perfect.

You may notice that the list is comprised of fairly recent albums (as in the last ten years or so). I have an explanation for this and a limited knowledge of music history is not part of the justification. I can assure you that I am familiar with John Coltrane, The Clash, The Velvet Underground, and many other legendary acts of which I’m sure you’re damning me for not including. Their exclusion goes back to production levels and their importance when it comes to ease of listening. And you may say that it’s completely unfair to hold the technology of the times against such bands as, say, Led Zeppelin. But realize this: I’m 28 years old. So by the time I got my hands on a copy of Physical Graffiti, the equipment used to record the album had long been outdated. My ears were born into a time of much clearer and pronounced audio. I still enjoy Black Sabbath’s Paranoid but the tinny, lo-fi production quality of the disc slaughters any real idea of what those songs should sound like to me. So while it’s still great, it’s not perfect.

I know, this is rough stuff we’re doing here. But nobody said it would be easy. I enjoy every band or artist mentioned in this article thus far. But, again, this is not a list of favorite artists. I agree that older production values handicapping an album is tragic and that I suffer a similar affliction for not being able to overcome the aural barrier. Perhaps the disadvantage is in my age and its overall youth in comparison to the history of music. Or perhaps your opinions of my list are just that: yours and, as we’ve already discovered, perfection is in the ear of the beholder.

Have your own qualifications for defining a perfect album? Have some perfect albums of your own? Hit us up in the comments.

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