[BIGVDOGG]

i stopped listening to the hip when this album came out. i only started to get back into the hip after seeing them in belleville.M@W,IVL,and IBE were all pretty much new to me as of last summer.fell in love with IVL,IBE grew on me,now i love the whole album,but for some reason i still really have not gotten into M@W. if and when i do though it will be like the boys put out another new album!

[cferneyh]

This can be verified by a simple experiment. You compile two playlists. One playlist groups a set of songs that flows, and the other jumbles them at random. You then subject a large number of volunteer listeners to one or the other of the playlists, and record their impressions -- not of the flow but of (a) the individual songs and (b) the playlist as a whole.

My suggestion is that the listeners of the jumbled playlist will not only rate the playlist lower as a whole, but also rate the individual songs lower.

I wonder who this will play out with the iPod generation. Only under extremely rare situations do I listen to a full CD from beginning to end anymore. The version of World Container that I made for playing in the car doesn't have Pretend or World Container, but does have a selection of tracks from the Live 10 series.

When I'm listening to my iPod, which is pretty much all day at work, it's pretty damn rare for me to have the same artist come up twice in a row, let alone the same "flow". Two tracks ago was Hells Bells, now it's Ray Lamontagne.

I know that most people download full albums from iTunes rather than individual tracks, but I've got to believe that most people eventually pull out the tracks from an album that they like best, and throw those into their playlists. As such, will an album's "flow" gradually cease to impact how one responds to an album? 20 years from now will revisionists cite M@W as the Hip's greatest work?

[skippy the wonder dog]

Actually, cferneyh, I was musing about that very question the other day, under OSM (Obsessive Subject of Musing) #137, Music, Appreciation of, Impact of Recording Technology upon -- one of my favourite topics.

You'd need to do a pretty exhaustive sampling of playlists to confirm it, but I'd suggest that despite the popular notion that "kids today" have supremely eclectic tastes, most iPods are largely stuffed with similar music, so the shuffle doesn't often bring up Meshuggah (sp?) followed by Woody Guthrie singing "Car, Car."

I'd think the people with eclectic tastes tend also to be active listeners rather than passive listeners, but they're in the minority.

My musings thus far suggest that the death of the album is likely to push the mass market into greater homogenization, which is in keeping with my general world view, which holds that anything of value is doomed, and cockroaches shall rule the earth.

Mind you, I always listen to CDs as CDs, because I can't be bothered to compile playlists and also because I would hate to miss the experience of rediscovering one of those tracks that I don't currently like best.

Ask this: if the album dies and we go back to the single, and if people discard tracks that don't immediately grab them, then what impact is that likely to have on music in the future? And to what extent will the much-hooplahed, Internet-driven supposed democratization of music have?

I'm really geeking out today. It must be Friday.

[Inch An Hour]

The entire middle of the album is spot on (The Bastard - The Bear). I'd kill to hear Freak Turbulence, Sharks, or Toronto #4 on Feb 8th (in Toronto, ironically).

[tigerthelion]

I love M@W. The only minor complaint I have is that Gord's lyrics seem to be a little too wordy in some songs. I think it's one of their strongest albums to date. I don't really care about the flow of albums either but I do agree that most listeners probably do. Having said that, flow isn't altogether irrelevant. DFN is the Hip's best album IMO because of the flow, the whole mood of the album. The "Evening With.." tour was so great because, firstly, they played for close to 2.5 hours, and secondly, because it was the tour promoting M@W so I got to hear "Train Overnight", "Stay", and "Putting Down" in a live show. "This song is called 'Stay', which means 'go', which means 'stay'," mused Downie during the intro to "Stay". That was one of the things I remember most about that incredible Halifax show.

[The Horrible Esthete]

What you're struggling wth is not the product of my obsessive-compulsive disorder, but of your failure to separate the general from the specific, and the objective from the subjective.

People favour the familiar and repetitious in music. That statement is backed up not only by a large body of research (you can start at <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/labs/levitin/">http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/labs/levitin/</a><!-- m -->), but by the simple and oft-repeated observation that the music industry gets people to buy crap by repeatedly forcing them to listen to it.

That's true of everyone to some degree, but individuals vary in how they respond to music and how actively they listen to it. It's not a stretch to suggest that people who listen to music less actively tend to favour greater familiarity and less change; this is supported by the nature of Muzak and pop-music clone acts, whose listeners surely are the least active listeners around. It's also not a stretch to suggest that the less active listeners are the larger group; again, this is supported by the nature of music that has the broadest appeal.

From that, it should be pretty clear that an album will have broader appeal if changes in tempo, timbre, etc. are gradual and minimal, rather than significant and abrupt. It will have broader appeal because it is more "listenable," that is, less demanding of the listener's attention. And this leads us to the suggestion that a less "listenable" album may sell more poorly, even if the individual songs are appealing, which is the case with M@W.

This can be verified by a simple experiment. You compile two playlists. One playlist groups a set of songs that flows, and the other jumbles them at random. You then subject a large number of volunteer listeners to one or the other of the playlists, and record their impressions -- not of the flow but of (a) the individual songs and (b) the playlist as a whole.

My suggestion is that the listeners of the jumbled playlist will not only rate the playlist lower as a whole, but also rate the individual songs lower.

If I actually do that experiment and post my results, then you can call me obsessive.

To say an album is "bad" is completely subjective. It depends what your yardstick is. If your concern is with whether you like the songs individually, you can call M@W a great album. But in calling it a "bad album," my concern is with why it was a sales failure.

Okay, I understand where you're coming from there.

But an objective assessment of what appeals to "less-active listeners" and why M@W wasn't a commercial success are of no interest to me. I'm only concerned with the subjective opinion of the songs on M@W. If you appreciate most of them, and enjoy listening to most of them, then by my definition, you like the album.

If you, "skippy the wonder dog" must argue that abrubpt changes in tone, tempo and timbre from song to song make the entire collection of songs less "listenable" for you, even though you like most of the songs themselves, and that in turn influences your overall opinion of Music at Work, then so be it.

All that matters to me is that I love 8 of the songs, I really like 3 others, I'm okay with 2 of 'em, and dislike one. So by my standards , that's a great album.

[skippy the wonder dog]

Oh, I like the songs, Esthete.

My personal objection to M@W is that it gets progressively weaker, and that's why I don't listen to it much. The songs I like appear early, and those that I don't appear later. Consequently, I don't listen to it all the way through.

[The Horrible Esthete]

Really?

For me, tracks 9 thru 14 might be the strongest 6-song run on any Hip record.

[ewallman]

I am NOT a musician, but for me FLOW simply means the CD has a kind of musical aura of its own, above and beyond the songs themselves. FC certainly flows, one song to the next start to finish as does WC (to me obviously). That probably makes little sense but it does not really mean a concept album per say just a 'mood' I guess of the whole song collection that makes it sound like one.

[ewallman]

Really?

For me, tracks 9 thru 14 might be the strongest 6-song run on any Hip record.

Therein lies one of the beauties of the Hip - the music is now quite diverse and each person hears different things on different cuts and from different albums. Better yet, for some reason Hip fans respect other opinions. I follow a Floyd forum similar to this and they can't stop cutting each other down for liking one CD over another...lol

[tigerthelion]

Really?

For me, tracks 9 thru 14 might be the strongest 6-song run on any Hip record.

Therein lies one of the beauties of the Hip - the music is now quite diverse and each person hears different things on different cuts and from different albums. Better yet, for some reason Hip fans respect other opinions. I follow a Floyd forum similar to this and they can't stop cutting each other down for liking one CD over another...lol

Speaking of Pink Floyd, "Tiger the Lion" reminds me of "Comfortably Numb" during the outro guitar. Just my two cents.

[The Horrible Esthete]

Speaking of Pink Floyd, "Tiger the Lion" reminds me of "Comfortably Numb" during the outro guitar. Just my two cents.

Me too.

After all, the timing, tempo, arrangement and progression of that segment are almost identical to "Numb".

[skippy the wonder dog]

Really?

After Sharks and Toronto #4, I kind of lose interest.

[opiated]

Love some songs on the disc..(completists,tiger, toronto,freak,bastard,stay) like some (bear, pines,music,lake,wild) and really don't care for sharks, or train....

[buffalorob]

Lots of love for Bastard.
That is a great tune, and one I would love to see live.
I saw six shows for M@W (3 in Europe), and none included the Bastard.
(Maybe in Buffalo? hinthint)
Sharks and Putting Down are also good tunes.
Tiger the Lion is different, but it does rock hard.
All the songs individually come across great in a mix, but as an album,
it is a bit "scattered"...could be the Mexican pot.