I have found it exceedingly difficult to write full length album reviews -much more difficult than not just my youth (which figures) but even than six months ago.
I have wanted to write at length about the Kingsley Maxbury, Americans In France, Los Campesinos, Massive Attack, Lil Wayne -on and on… but their are problems.
1. I don’t know the albums well enough because
2. I listen to tracks and playlists because
3. I don’t have the time to listen to full albums and
4. It is not the way I listen to music any more and
5. I write a blog -I have to post and post to get more and more readers so
6. It takes too much time to write a full length post and
7. Nobody wants to read it anyway.
But there is an absolute downside: I’m a music critic and there album tracks that keep on boppin’ up and down on my playlists and I know if I gave em time I would be able to formulate why a love a certain album and so I am missing the specific for the huge. I have to listen to a little of a lot or I couldn’t keep in touch with what I am writing about.
This is what is getting lost in the move from CDs to streaming. It is a little ironic: bands went from having to fill eighty minutes to having to fill five minutes. CDs also killed the album by forcing the bands to fill up too much room, mp3s killed the album by not giving bands the room they need to sustain a vision.
I am reaching the conclusion thirty minutes is the perfect size (for the most part -I mean, except when it isn’t) for an album but it’s not what we’re gonna get. But, perhaps because I am not an audiophile, I prefer mp3s to any other form of music distribution ever. It costs me a lot to lose the album, to miss the Kingsbury Manx as an extended vision, but I gave so much more. So I guess you’ll just hafta live with short album reviews.