45 REVELATIONS
Because I’ve concentrated on singles for the last seven years, it’s harder all the time for me to find common ground with most of my album-oriented reviewing colleagues. We’re looking for different things in records. Let’s oversimplify a while.
45 REVELATIONS
DEPARTMENTS
by Ken Barnes
Because I’ve concentrated on singles for the last seven years, it’s harder all the time for me to find common ground with most of my album-oriented reviewing colleagues. We’re looking for different things in records.
Let’s oversimplify a while. The LP brigades scour their album stacks for things like unity of conception, lyrical manifestos, and tormented, passionate works of anguished art into which the artist has obviously poured his or her entire soul, so that each note trembles with life-or-death intensity. Serious.
I look through my single piles or punch my car radio buttons for instant impact, the momentary flash of brilliance, the never-ending satori, breakfast at ephiphanies, the compressed dwarf star radiance of the great pop record.