i'd rather another bonus track besides a song we already have a HQ version of 
i'd love another alternate album like the WKAP alternate. hoping hoping hoping.
she said 12 or 14 or 15 songs would make the album--JUST MAKE IT FIFTEEN, PLEASE. the more the better
Just because the songs were recorded doesn't mean that they necessarily make cohesive sense with the feel of the record (as a whole). Amanda is one of the few artists I love that still makes
albums that I want to listen to in their entirety, and I am happy with whatever length this thing ends up being if it makes for a stronger piece of art…
I try and take things in without any bias, but I do feel there a couple of important rules which can make or break my feelings towards an EP/LP:
• SEQUENCING/RUNNING ORDER: I always
liked NIN's "With Teeth" but never felt it to be a journey like the other Nails' albums…because of the tracklist the way it is, it seemed to me like a collection of songs that occasionally nodded to one another in passing. A few years back I rearranged the flow in a playlist, and found it much more enjoyable.
• LENGTH/TRT: I won't lie, I come from an era where the norm was digesting things in chunks (and not "a song here and a song there" as is much easier these days). I know (as I know Amanda's knows) a lot of people don't listen to music that way anymore, but, for those who do………an extra song or two or twelve can stifle something from really breathing. I love The Smashing Pumpkins' "Adore" but a lot of people complained about how long it was. Seems ironic being that their most successful record was a double-disc, but "Adore" is dense. It's not a "rock" album. And it was a huge shift in style for SP in a lot of fan's eyes. We're going on thirteen years since "Adore" came out, and I stand by my feelings that it was ahead of its time………but I wonder how much more successful it might have been if it'd been released as a few EPs where the audience wouldn't have had so much to digest all at once. To play Devil's advocate, I also wonder how much worse it would've done if it'd included the four or five fan favorites they cut because they knew it was already "too long."
• COHESION: It was a relief to find out from other music-loving friends that I'm not the only one who will catalog "bonus tracks" separately in my iTunes library. Anal retentive? Definitely. But it drives me crazy when I'm listening to something and all of the sudden a live cut/remix/acoustic version/b-side from some soundtrack comes slamming in. I can't think of any album's off the top of my head where throwing a bunch of that shit together "works" for me as anything but - a bunch of thrown-together-shit…
Marilyn Manson integrated crowd noise into his studio albums in a tasteful manner…
Poe was awesome for putting silence after the final track of "Haunted" so that the "Hey Pretty" remix (the one that got her some radio/video play) was available but didn't harm the beautiful story she's just woven for/about her deceased father…
But in general? It's rare.
To be fair, a lot of artists these days will put their (insert-store-name-here)-exclusive tracks elsewhere on their albums so that the record ends the way they want it to - hell, look back to the bonus tracks on "Yes, Virginia" coming before "Sing" - but it's a slippery slope of "getting it right."
All that said, don't think that other songs won't find their way out into the world in other ways. There's a lot, lot, lot planned and I think many of you will be pleased.
Author
Topic: Amanda recording a new album! (Read 22298 times)