Clint Green wrote:
I agree to a certain extent regarding the songs. They do have a great deal of really good songs (Another Day is a prime example) but a lot of them are kind of boring.
Well in general I think we have to accept a bum album every now and then. Bands are signed to contracts which bind them, amongst other things, to deliver so many albums in such-and-such a time (though the cycles are longer now than they once were) and it must get to a point where they HAVE to release an album even if they don't have a good set of songs or half-finished songs.
It's easier if you don't write your own material or have an audience that will not have a knee jerk rejection of material from elsewhere (Clapton, for example, can choose material from all over the place and put his own personal stamp on it).
There are artists who have long runs of creativity with loads of strong songs, but they're exceptional enough that it's remarked upon.
With everything else that goes on, the touring, the practising on one's instrument, all the aspects of a professional music career, the need to have an actual life, the demands on having records out in sufficient quantity and at the required times it's not easy to sustain compositional excellence. I think it may be harder in a band where everybody wants to have their 5c worth and so compromises may be necessary.
I dunno, it seems to be a general Prog Rock thing though, where bands often try to fit too many ideas into a song. For example, you'll be listening to a song and there'll be a melody which sounds really cool (could certainly be considered a hook) but they move away from it too soon and never revisit it again. That kind of bums me out because they have this cool hook which they could have built a great song around but instead it's presented as a short bridge or something like that.
Yeah, but the point of prog rock, or A point, is to have the complex riffs and lots of changes and interesting sounds. If a band just writes great melodies with good lyrics (did I say "just" ?) and plays for the song then they're not prog rock really.
