It's awesome when a band/artist you love suddenly releases a deluge of new material, isn't it? Whether it's a double album or a trilogy of EPs, hearing new material for the first time sure is exciting. But later on once the afterglow has worn off I often wonder what a more condensed collection of this material might sound like. If all the fat were trimmed away and one standard-length album was assembled from all that we got, would we be left with an undisputed masterpiece of art? Join me as I explore this theory today with some of my favourite artists. Think of these as playlist ideas if you want. I'll even try coming up with fancy names for them too.
Choose Your Illusion by Guns N' Roses (1991)
One complaint I hear a lot from people who don't like Guns N' Roses (i.e. weirdos) is that it took them too long to make their second/third full-length album(s) and when they finally did it was a bloated wreck with too much filler and that if it was just one album of songs it would've been pretty good. While I agree that the four years' wait was too long, I still think Use Your Illusion I and II are fine albums that are worthy additions to the GNR discography. But if those thirty songs are too much for you I understand; allow me to trim it down to twelve. This was not an easy playlist for me to make up since I like both albums so much – although I clearly prefer I over II as you can see by the eight-to-four split – but these twelve songs best represent where the band was at musically in 1991. I've included the big hits (“You Could Be Mine”, “Civil War”), the ballads (“November Rain”, “Don't Cry”), and the hard rockers (“Locomotive”, “Right Next Door to Hell”). I also wanted to bring to light songs like “Bad Apples” and “Bad Obsession” which I think decent under-appreciated rock tunes that remind me of the Rolling Stones. I left off the cover songs and the drawn-out “Estranged”; I never much cared for them. And if you were expecting to see “My World” on this list then you must be out of your mind! So here's to you, non-GNR fans. If you're still not satisfied then I'm afraid I can't help you.
Approximate run time: 1 hour 15 minutes
1. “Right Next Door to Hell”, I
2. “Civil War”, II
3. “Bad Obsession”, I
4. “Don't Cry”, I
5. “Breakdown”, II
6. “Locomotive”, II
7. “Dust N' Bones”, I
8. “Double Talkin' Jive”, I
9. “November Rain”, I
10. “Bad Apples”, I
11. “You Could Be Mine”, II
12. “Coma”, I
Machina 1.5: The Gods of Modern Music by The Smashing Pumpkins (2000)
In 2000 the Smashing Pumpkins put out two albums: Machina/The Machines of God and Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music. They were OK. As far as I'm aware Machina II never got a physical commercial release – instead it was available for free on the internet, possibly the first major album to do so – and as a result lots of people never heard it. True, the band's glory days had just recently come to an end but both Machina albums still had a lot of good songs on them with a variety of tones and sounds. This goes double for the marathon second album: almost half the songs there are B-sides and alternate versions. This made it difficult for me to decide which songs should go where, what a good order for them would be, so I tried starting out with the heavier songs and ending with the gloomier ones. All in all I ended up with thirteen songs – seven from Machina I and six from Machina II – out of a possible forty for an approximate run time of 57 minutes. With these two albums together I think we've got a pretty good collection roughly on par with Pisces Iscariot. Not as great as my made-up title suggests, but still worth your time.
1. “The Everlasting Gaze”, I
2. “Raindrops + Sunshowers”, I
3. “Dross”, II
4. “Real Love”, II
5. “Let Me Give the World to You”, II
6. “The Sacred and Profane”, I
7. “Try, Try, Try”, I
8. “In My Body”, II
9. “Here's to the Atom Bomb”, II
10. “If There is a God (Piano)”, II
11. “Age of Innocence”, I
12. “The Crying Tree of Mercury”, I
13. “Blue Skies Bring Tears”, I
Not the Actual Witch Violence by Nine Inch Nails (2016, 2017, 2018)
Last decade Nine Inch Nails announced that they would put out a trilogy of EPs: Not the Actual Events, Add Violence, and Bad Witch (later re-branded as a full-length album even though it's only 30 minutes). Each of the three works had their focuses: Not the Actual Events returned to the abrasive industrial sound of the band's earlier material, Add Violence adopted a calmer, more electronic approach, and Bad Witch took both avenues and drowned them in a darker atmosphere (with some unexpected saxophone to boot!). The three releases produced a total of 16 songs. One could argue that that would be enough for a single long album – 1999's The Fragile included 23 – but for this one I decided to cut out the fluff and present only the essentials. And so we end up with a roughly 49 minute collection of ten songs (split 3-2-5) which I think is pretty good, but you're probably better off just listening to the three original recordings anyways.
1. “Less Than”, AV
2. “Shit Mirror”, BW
3. “Ahead of Ourselves”, BW
4. “Play the Goddamned Part”, BW
5. “She's Gone Way”, NTAE
6. “The Idea of You”, NTAE
7. “This Isn't the Place”, AV
8. “I'm Not From this World”, BW
9. “Burning Bright (Field on Fire)”, NTAE
10. “Over and Out”, BW
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