Nit Picks, Pet Peeves and Guilty Pleasures 1.3: Reviewing The Review

Reviewing the Review Part 4d: The Rubric

Category 4: Album Presentation

Album Structure: This looks at how well an album is put together. Do the songs flow nicely between each other? Are transitions logical? Is it too long or too short? This rewards a band (and a producer) that not only know how to write good songs, but knows how to put them together to make the entire album an enjoyable piece of art. For an album to get a good score in this category I have to be able to say that I enjoy listening to it front to back without skipping songs or gravitating towards certain parts of the album. The album should come together as whole piece that has a consistent flow and narrative. It should have carefully placed high and low points and should make listening as engaging as possible.

Production: Production is a pretty simple category- it takes into account how the album was produced. This category does not look at whether or not there was a lot of money thrown into the production of the album, but it looks at how well the album is produced. An album can be marked down for being over-produced as well as underproduced. Basically what I’m looking at here is how good everything in the album sounds. Does the producer bring all of the instruments and effects together to make a compelling and cohesive sound, without sacrificing the integrity of each individual part? Production is a particularly important category because it can affect other categories, most notably album structure and emotional landscape.