Modern music usually comes packaged in an album format with many short songs. In some cases, especially in the past when “album oriented” music was targeted to the album buying public, albums were designed to be a cohesive whole; while in other cases they consist of unconnected songs chosen to fill up the length of an album. In the years I’ve listened to music, I’ve become fascinated by what I call the “perfect album”. I’ve found a few rare gems that achieve something special that is elusively hard to understand. 

A perfect album is one in which every song individually is one I like (that is, the album has no songs I do not like), and the entire album “hangs together” in a way that makes it a cohesive whole. An album has to have both criteria to be perfect: each song has to be one I like itself, and all the songs have to be a cohesive whole. Many albums have one or the other, but not both. I believe I have identified only four of these in my life.

Chris Squire’s Fish Out Of Water was the first perfect album I ever identified as such, and it started me on my quest to find others. I got started contemplating perfect albums when I realized this album has both criteria: I liked every song, and the album as a whole. It’s hardest to put the “whole” into words: something about the album has a cohesiveness that makes it work. By far, this album is the best example of a perfect album I have ever encountered.

Yes’ Relayer is another perfect album, with a twist. The (three) songs fit the criteria of being good and cohesive, and by that measure it qualifies as a perfect album. But the original Relayer suffered from inferior sound quality. I did not know if this qualified as a perfect album or not: could good songs that don’t sound that great when they are played back be “perfect”? I have, for example, a rare live recording with all three songs performed live (the first two songs are relatively common, it’s the third that’s hard to get on a live recording) with better sound quality; but is this an “album” or just three good songs? The point became moot when the remastered version was released, which fixed the sound quality. I do not know what went wrong with the original mastering, but the sound was muddy and lacked the liveliness of earlier Yes albums. Relayer was recorded on home-studio equipment, and I wondered if that had anything to do with it. The remastered version sounded so different, and so much better, I thought it was a different album. The fact that remastering fixed the sound quality proves it was not the original recording: Yes and Eddie Offord (the producer) made some of the most amazing sounding albums considering the limitations of the 1970s studio equipment which they had to work with. Their albums from the early 1970s are amazing. That the original master of Relayer was mastered in some way that reduced the sound quality makes more sense than for the original recording to have been flawed. The remaster cleaned up the sound and made it a perfect album.

Brand X’s Product is the most curious perfect album because it was not the work of one person or group with an overall focus and style. Most perfect albums are the work of one person or a small group working tightly together. Product just happened: it is essentially the best nine songs picked out of the songs in a single, mammoth recording session (so large it spawned two more albums of outtakes). Yet every song on Product is incredible, and the album hangs together as a whole even though Brand X at this point was practically two different bands sharing the same name. The songs all have a certain unique common sound, as do all the other perfect albums, even though varied people were involved in arranging and playing the material.

Erin O’Donnell’s Scratching The Surface is a latecomer to the list. I was quite surprised by the album, since I find most modern Christian music in album format to be of the three-hits-and-filler variety. Very few albums are intended to be albums, rather than collections of songs. Yet this album blew me away. I had already begun my list of perfect albums by this time, and I knew the first time I heard it it was another for the list. For some reason I can’t quite explain, it reminds me strongly of Fish Out Of Water. I do not know why, since there is little musical similarity.

What is not a perfect album? Many albums come close to being perfect, such as Genesis’ Wind and Wuthering. But they don’t quite make it. Had it not contained the blight of “All In A Mouse’s Night”, it would have certainly qualified; and without this song, it definitely does, but I do not count any album to which alterations must be made as being perfect. “All In A Mouse’s Night” is the kind of song for which the fast forward function had been invented. Curiously, just as Product achieved perfection out of disunity, it is the unity of Wind and Wuthering which disqualified it: on the album are perhaps the best (“Afterglow”) and worst (“All In A Mouse’s Night”) songs Tony Banks ever wrote by himself. Wuthering has the heavy stamp of Tony Banks, who dominated the Genesis songwriting in the sliver of years after Peter Gabriel left and before Phil Collins came into his own as a songwriter.

I find it curious that I can’t think of any perfect concept album, that is an album designed to be a cohesive whole and have all the songs come together for a greater purpose. Yet none of the concept albums I have ever heard have the second criteria, that all the songs be good. Most concept albums suffer from, if nothing else, too much filler. Yes’ Tales From Topographic Oceans is much too long: they have a good single-album’s worth of music padded out unmercifully to double-album length by repetition, noodling, and meandering. The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway is a masterpiece, but not perfect, because it starts strong and ends with a side-long whimper on the fourth side: everything from Lilywhite Lillith onward decreases in its impact until the album limps to a close with the slow-motion, dirge-like reprise “The Light Dies Down On Broadway”, with its Bankensian forced rhymes replacing the Gabrielitic lyrical inspiration of the original, and long noodling pieces in desperate need of an editor. It’s curious that neither of these two albums has ever been performed in their entirety since their initial release. Both bands have produced shortened versions, especially Genesis, who picked out the few interesting musical phrases from the limpid second half of The Lamb for a medley. It seems like trying to create a perfect album is not the way to achieve one.

I’m still looking for perfect albums.