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What makes a great album great?

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Aram:
Yeah, well, you condensed it to a much shorted way :P

monkeyangst:

--- Quote from: Octillus ---A great album feels cohesive. It lacks the feeling of "Hey these songs will be singles and the rest will be filler" that commercial bands try to push these days
--- End quote ---

I agree with you, but it's wrong to add the "these days."

The notion of the album as a singular piece of work is a relatively recent one. (I'm speaking here of pop music, as classical and jazz have had their own roles for the album) Prior to sometime in the 1960s, an album was just that -- a collection of songs, some of which were understood to be the singles which would make the label money, and others that pretty much existed to fill the sides of an LP. I'm not sure who pioneered the concept of the album as a cohesive whole, but my money's on Dylan, as with most other things.

Merkava:
A great album has to be of good quality, but it must also be a symbol. It has to represent itself, a really good album, but also something more. When you can take an ambiguous feeling and assign it to the album and not feel like you're stretching anything, I'd say you have one part of the criteria for a great album. Slanted and Enchanted represents the quintessential Indie album. A bunch of guys who can't even afford a bass guitar getting together in a basement and making music they like, then reaching a level of success. It's representitive of it's genre and of the spirit of the genre.

BiCoastal Kid:
I think another important aspect is the track arrangement. It's what makes some of my favorite albums such as "Loveless" "Funeral" "Illinois" and dare I say it "De-loused In The Comatorium"(even if Frances just blows....). The fact that every song seems like it should be just where it is.

What if "Loveless" opened with "When You Sleep"? The album wouldn't flow as well into each song like it does.
What if "The Seer's Tower" was thrown into the first half of "Illinois" instead of being one of the final non-instrumentals? "Tallest Man, Broadest Shoulders" wouldn't be as impactful as the albums "closing track" and the album's progression just wouldn't be as dramatic.
If "Funeral" didn't close with "In The Backseat"? How else would it end and still feel as fulfilling?

De-Loused.... I just like to rock out to it since it pretty much hauls through.

nescience:
Track ordering certainly exerts a heavy influence on the feel of an album, but it's not always the case that a mixed-up track ordering would be inferior to the given track ordering.  I own two versions of XTC's Drums and Wires, one of which (the vinyl copy) with a slightly different track order from the other.  The feel of the album is certainly changed by moving a song or two from the beginning to the end, but I wouldn't say it's all the worse for it, it just spreads things out and puts some upbeat tracks farther back.  I can't honestly say which track order I prefer and I love that album.

It's possible that our personal identification with great albums exerts the same order of influence as the tracklisting chosen by the artist or production team.  While we can easily argue that some songs are best served as "killer openers" or "great closers" and we can accept that some albums were conceived in a linear fashion, we shouldn't limit ourselves to that way of thinking.  Part of our enjoyment of the order might have to do with the anticipation of the next track and the knowledge of where we are in the song cycle (since we normally don't have to deal with variations like my XTC example).  We buy an album, become familiar with it, and develop an attachment based on the linear structure with which we are acquainted.

Try someday to put one of your favorite albums on Random and listen to it like that for a while.  It'll certainly be jarring, but after a while you'll start hearing new things in the songs that you didn't hear before.  It's fun!

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