Why Do A Concept Album?

Hello everyone, and welcome to another fun-filled article in which we explore some interesting music philosophy, while giving you some insight into why and how we created Moira's Lake.

In this essay, we focus on the idea of the concept album.

THE POWER OF STORY

People like stories.

Some of the most powerful messages to ever reach our culture have been delivered through a story. Whether it is philosophy in the stories of Ayn Rand, political commentary in the stories of George Orwell, spiritual stories in The Bible, Koran and other religious books, or morals in the fables of Aesop.

Regardless of your opinion of those books, their impact was far reaching.

Were someone to walk up to you and simply tell you their views on philosophy, spirituality, politics and morality, you might not be compelled to listen.

However, wrap that information into a fictional tale, with plenty of emotion, and suddenly people love it. They are captivated by great characters, and dramatic stories.

It is this very concept that brought me to embrace the idea of telling stories through music.

A collection of great songs on an album is fine, but connect them with an engrossing narrative, both from a story perspective, and a music one, and you've given people a chance to experience something many times more impactful than just a series of random songs.

All because of the power of story.

FEEL THE BURN

As nice as that sounds, most people do not view things this way. In fact, the concept album has a bit of a negative social stigma.

I can recall my own impression of concept albums in my younger years, and remember wincing and raising an eyebrow when a friend would recommend an album to me, saying that it was "a concept album".

"Hmmm... I don't know..." I thought as I tentatively took the CD from him. There was no way this album was going to be any good.

Wait.

Had I heard it yet?

No.

Face it, "concept album" is not really something you tell people about a record if you want them to give it the benefit of the doubt.

For years, decades even, the concept album has been put on par with the "Rock Opera". There are a rare few who like it, but for the most part it's seen as unfashionable, unpopular, unhip, and most often really corny.

HOW CONCEPT ALBUMS FAIL

With a few exceptions, most concept albums turn out to be pompous, over-inflated, poorly written plays, all lovingly committed to audio CD by over-achieving rock musicians.

Why would I say that?

The reason most concept albums fail, or at least end up in the "cheese" category is built into the core level of it:

They are created by rock musicians.

Not novel writers, screen writers, playwrites, or someone who understands the art of crafting story and characters.

Nope. Rock musicians.

So what's wrong with that?

Musicians, in general, know music (barely), and that's it.

And in general, they only know, fairly well, their own chosen style of music.

So when it comes to suddenly writing a piece of music that is based on a full story (which they have no experience writing) and fleshed-out characters (which they have no experience developing) and setting all that to music (in a way which they are not used to writing) the results are often more humorous, or sympathetic than intended.

Just because you can write bad poetry, does not mean you can write a good novel.

THE DANGERS IN DOING A CONCEPT ALBUM

Even when you have a story-based album that does not fall into the "cheese" category, there are other dangers to be aware of.

There are a few albums in particular I've heard, and even own, that upset the balance of story and music.

What does that mean, you ask?

Well, one danger is when an album goes way too far in favor of the story and concept. So far, in fact, that the music actually suffers and takes a back seat.

Sometimes they'll cram it full of needless dialogue and atmospheric transition that take way too long and put the listener out of the music. Or they'll write songs that are less catchy or flowing.

Yes, it's supposed to be an album based around a story or concept, but it's still an album, and it has to be a great listen, story or not.

On the opposite side, I've heard concept albums that just sound like normal albums from that band. A collection of unrelated songs (musically) that don't seem to tell any specific mood, story, or emotion, unless you read some of the lyrics.

In this type of album, the story feels like an afterthought, thrown over the songs at the last minute and retrofitted to apply to the music they wrote beforehand.

WHY YOU SHOULDN'T DO A CONCEPT ALBUM

As you've seen from the many reasons above, there are many pitfalls, challenges and worries to be concerned about if attempting to write a concept album, and many times, the overall execution of it is seen as cheesey, sub-par, aimless, or just plain silly.

Just to hammer it home, here are a few more practical reasons NOT to do one.

1) DIFFICULTY

Making a concept album is hard! All the thinking and planning that goes into making one is daunting enough to turn most musicians off before even starting.

2) APPEAL

As we already discussed, people have a preconceived notion about concept albums. Why give them something they already think they don't want?

3) DEMAND

Many in the new generation don't even listen to full albums much anymore. They want the individual singles only. A concept album goes against this trend.

4) ACCESSIBILITY

Many concept albums are complex musically, and are not very accessible on a first pass listen. Sadly, most people will never give anything more than one chance.

5) SUCCESS

With very few exceptions (like The Wall, or American Idiot), concept albums are not the kinds of records that furiously climb up the charts. Want success? Yeah, don't make a concept album.

6) ALIENATION

If you already have an established fan base, by creating an 'artsy-fartsy' concept record you will, guaranteed, alienate some of your previous fans. It's a given. No one wants that right?

SO, WHY DO A CONCEPT ALBUM?

Boy, that was kind of depressing.

I thought this was supposed to be about why it was a positive thing that we did a concept album?

Well, let me say this:

Being fully aware of what I discussed in this essay beforehand, we still made Moira's Lake.

Why?

• I believe in the power of a good story to connect listeners to the music.
• I love art, music and movies that can take me away to another place for a moment in time.
• Strong emotional music has the power to positively affect people lives.
• My goal is not to achieve financial success from this album, only to touch a select few people.
• Music is over-saturated on every TV show, movie, commercial and website. In order to stand out, you need to really give people an experience.
• Most experiences are short and fleeting. To really make a long-term impression, you need a deep, multi-layered immersive story that takes plenty of time to fully absorb and discover.
• No one else was telling the story or writing the music I wanted to hear, so I had no other choice.

TASTE YOUR OWN MEDICINE

You may be thinking, "You talked about how people fail at making a good concept album, and the dangers they often face in making one..."

(To which I nod).

"So, what about YOUR concept album, huh? Why is that any different?"

Good question.

Perhaps it's not any different.

I will be the first to acknowledge that maybe Moira's Lake falls into all of the negative examples I listed above.

It may not be perfect, it may suffer the same faults as other albums, it may never be appreciated, it may fail spectacularly.

In the end, I created Moira's Lake because it's what I want.

It moves me, it makes me feel, and it felt wonderful to do.

From the messages I get, I know that it's already been emotionally affecting people, and positively impacting a few lives.

Therefore to me, it is a success.

So maybe it is different.

Or maybe it's not.

However, that's up to you.


EDIT (12/15/09): For a more humorous, satirical look at concept albums, and progressive bands, read this article. 



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Why Do Something So Different?

No doubt most of you reading this have already had a chance to start listening to Moira's Lake and begin absorbing it (through osmosis).

I would assume one of your first impressions might have been, "well, this is definitely different." (At which point you began screaming incoherently and urinating all over the walls).

Good or bad, the direction, arrangement, feel and overall vision of this album is by far the biggest change musically we have committed so far.

And so we begin our series on the origins of Moira's Lake, starting with the broad question:

Why did we do something so different?

But first...

WHY DON'T PEOPLE DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT?

Just because I had to pose the question of why, it already says that changing and deviating from the norm is not usual. So why don't more artists continually do something different with each new album?

Of course, some artists do just that, but in today's modern culture, deviating from something had has proven itself "successful" in any way is the road less traveled.

Innovation at its core requires risk, and risk implies no guarantee.

Borrowing from my essay "Artistic Integrity and The Dichotomy Of Success", when an artist makes it to a particular point in their career where they are lucky enough to make all of their income from the art they create, they are suddenly put into an ironic situation where they are now entirely beholden to their fan base.

If the artists wants to do something a bit different on their new album, there is a big possibility that the fans may not like it, and therefore, the artists will not make much money from it. Which is why so many bands pretty much find their niche and stick with it. (Look at AC/DC for example).

This is only one small reason why we see so little innovation and risk in popular music.

It's becomes less about creating art, and more about creating income.

STUCK IN A RUT

After I had released my second album, Empyreal Progeny, I realized I was in a rut.

A musical rut, if you will (go ahead).

Looking back at my previous two records, I became upset with myself after feeling that I had found a sort of groove, and was just doing things the easy way.

I was not trying anything new, I was not risking or experimenting, and I was not challenging myself.

In a way, I felt bored by what I had done so far. And boredom is a creativity killer.

There is no energy in boredom, and I felt that the only way I could keep things interesting, fresh and exciting for me, was to give myself a challenge. I needed to force myself out of my comfort zone and do something that would really scare the shit out of me.

So, in retaliation (against myself), I started laying out some new rules and goals as I started writing for what would eventually become Moira's Lake.

IT'S ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE

One of the main factors in my new manifesto was the unifying principle of creating an experience.

Over time, I had become increasingly disinterested in your run-of-the-mill bands, and wanted to strive beyond the dull concept of just "a few dudes who play some cool stuff... man".

The solution for me was to look to other areas of art and culture in which I found myself more affected by the emotion and message of the medium.

Namely, dramatic films and novels.

I loved the way I could be sucked into a great epic film, living within that environment for the duration of the movie, and thinking about it for hours afterward.

I wanted to aim for a similar level of immersion into a musical world, with interesting fleshed-out characters, strong human drama, and a compelling story.

Something that could transcend the mundane rock album, and become the equivalent of an audio movie.

BECOMING A STORYTELLER

People gravitate towards stories.

A good story grabs our imagination and takes us away from the doldrums of our monotone lives for a few exciting moments.

And it was this philosophy that I heartily embraced when working on Moira's Lake.

On Empyreal Progeny, I found myself writing a series of songs across the album with an interconnected theme. They were all based on the same perspective and through the narrative of an entirely fictional character and scenario. Though not every song on that album tied into the story, it was my first attempt at creating a theme that would try to weave the whole experience together in an effort to create greater significance for the whole.

Once I began writing for Moira's Lake, I consciously decided that the whole album was going to be a full story all the way through. And this time, it would not be hidden like it was on the second album. It would be the lattice work for the music to grow on.

I'll go into the details of the story of Moira's Lake in a series of future essays.

MORE IS MORE

Sweet Painful Reality and Empyreal Progeny are too repetitive.

There I said it.

They are.

At least for my tastes, at this time, my first two records feel stale in regards to their arrangements.

Just my opinion.

When I started work on this third album, one of my goals was to go against my normal arrangement style and force myself to write songs with many more parts and changes.

At first it was quite a challenge for me, especially coming from the more traditional writing background I had, but once I got into the flow, I suddenly felt incredibly inspired. I had removed many of the preconceived musical boundaries I had placed on myself, and now almost anything was possible.

Always keeping the story and characters in mind while composing, I was now able write things that would have never worked before: suspenseful sections, horrific and unsettling parts, melodies that created tension and release, rhythms that kept the listener in the same on-edge emotional and mental state as the characters.

Honestly, the new approach felt very liberating.

And let me tell you, there is a hell of a lot of energy in that.

BREAKING THROUGH THE FEAR

Even as a child, writing stupid melodies on the piano, I envisioned the music I would eventually write as having strange rhythms, odd time signatures (even before I knew the term for that) and sometimes avant-garde chords or melodies.

This strangely coming from a kid whose favorite album at the time was M.C. Hammer "Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em"!

Unfortunately, if you listen to Sweet Painful Reality, none of that mentality appears to have made it on to that album. Why?

I played it safe.

I was afraid to experiment.

I tried too hard to be something.

On Empyreal Progeny, there are a few, albeit subtle moments of some more interesting musical notions, but even there, it was still on the safe side.

In my mind, I had always been a fan of pushing musical concepts and experimenting with chords, rhythms and melodies, but in practice, I was scared.

After two albums of playing it safe, I finally had the pent-up motivation to say, "fuck it. I'm going for it."

My goal was to up all of the instrumentation, guitars, drums, bass, synths, even vocals. Why? Because I like that kind of stuff. So I pushed all of my fellow musicians to play and think beyond anything we had done previously. (Which they were none too happy about at first, but are quite glad they did now).

Moira's Lake is the first time in over eight years that I finally had the balls to do what was really in my heart, and not succumb to my own internal pressures of what people want, or what they don't want.

We get so few chances in life to really put our ideas into the world, and this time I wanted to have as little regrets as possible.

I wanted to make the most musical music I could muster.

THE DOWNSIDE OF BEING DIFFERENT

As I mentioned above, doing something different is a risk. It could pay off, sure, but usually the odds are against it.

And boy are the odds against poor Moira.

When I released Empyreal Progeny in 2004 (wow, that was a long time ago... how depressing), there were some fans of Sweet Painful Reality that did not enjoy the change between the records.

And though it's never fun to hear, when you evolve and change, even just a little bit, not everyone will appreciate that change. So is the nature of things.

However, to its credit, there were also many more people who found us on Empyreal Progeny who told us how much more they liked it compared to Sweet Painful Reality.

Keeping that in mind, with the very significant changes on Moira's Lake, I knew ahead of time that I would end up alienating some of our previous fans.

It's a really different album for us, and it will piss some people off.

It sucks. But that's just how it works. If you want to grow and change, you have to take the risks. You (I) can't have it both ways.

More odds piled against Moira come in the form of creating an album that is not immediately accessible.

In today's music market, if a song does not jump into the chorus within the first thirty seconds and stick in your head, you're done. It's over.

Not only is Moira's Lake not the kind of album you can immediately understand, but it also takes energy and effort from the listener to fully appreciate the experience.

You can't demand effort from your listeners! That's basically like committing pop music suicide.

Besides, people don't want long, intense, emotional and thoughty opuses. They want Rhianna and Lady GaGa.

Right?

SO WHY DO SOMETHING SO DIFFERENT?

Because the world is saturated with untalented, bland, "me too" shitty bands.

Because I believe that many people would actually want more immersive emotional experiences, if they only knew that they existed.

Because, being a person who passionately cares about art, music and emotion, I had no other choice.

Because it could be my only chance to do something in life that might actually matter.

Because to not do so would be an insult to the intelligence of all of you.

Because I'm an insecure, pathetic musician who feels the need to try and impress people with what I can create musically, to compensate for all of my glaring flaws, inadequacies, and deficiencies as a human being.

And that's the truth. Well, partially...

NIKO