Albums that are particularly short

[kalowski]

The brilliant Monkees' album Headquarters is 29.59 long but it feels much longer as it is so joyous.

[Johnny Yesno]

Torture Garden (1990) by Naked City comprises 42 perfectly formed tracks in 25m46s.

Naked City - Torture Garden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccyhnJo00Y4

Cartooom! (2004) by Plus-tech Squeeze Box is 28m05s long and has 13 tracks.

Plus-Tech Squeeze Box - CARTOOOM! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UpwGaUonuQ

Both are extremely dense content-wise and are as long as they need to be. They're much longer albums compressed into a shorter space of time.

Actually, Japanese Picopop is a good source of these:

Sonic Coaster Pop - SUPER MIRACLE CIRCUIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t0RyYRU1-4 (2004)

Macdonald Duck Eclair -「Short short」: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Bgbl85Ev0 (2004)

Ironically, Short Short is their longest album.

[JaDanketies]

Naked City

First ever non-metal band signed to Earache Records iirc. I used to listen to Naked City quite a lot but it's been a good few years now. Must've dropped off my radar when that old external hard drive broke.

[Johnny Yesno]

First ever non-metal band signed to Earache Records iirc. I used to listen to Naked City quite a lot but it's been a good few years now. Must've dropped off my radar when that old external hard drive broke.

Could be. Depends how you define metal, I guess. I would say Scorn are a more clear candidate for that title.

[boki]

First ever non-metal band signed to Earache Records iirc.

Did they put anything out on Earache? I know they released a couple of Painkiller albums.

[boki]

Did they put anything out on Earache? I know they released a couple of Painkiller albums.

Thought I'd stop being lazy and look it up.  There was a compilation appearance and a split flexi with Napalm Death which is credited to Zorn, but appears to contain Naked City tracks.

[thehungerartist]

Been listening a lot to Bright Phoebus (36m39s) again after seeing Richard Thompson mention it in his autobiography.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Dylan's 'Blonde on Blonde' double album was noted at the time, as side four of the vinyl release only had one song 'Sad Eyed Lady of The Lowlands' which clocked in (from memory!) at around twelve and a half minutes; which was short-change even back then, for an album, where a side generally ran to about twenty to twenty five minutes.

Three years later, he would release Nashville Skyline, which clocks at 27 minutes in its entirety.

[JaDanketies]

This 15-minute black metal / crust punk release is good. MELISSA - S/T CS. Part of me worries that it might be an EP. 

[billyandthecloneasaurus]

Electric Six's Fire is probably not short enough to be considered particularly short at 38 mins or so, but most of the best tracks are like 90 seconds to 2 and a half mins long and it's a quick listen.

It's also ace.

One of my mates picked it one week in our album club and I thought it was incredibly fucking annoying to be honest.

[grainger]

I don't understand the problem about one side of a double album being shorter than the others. Should the artist do the 1990s CD trick of filling the available space with shite?

[Tokyo van Ramming]

One of my mates picked it one week in our album club and I thought it was incredibly fucking annoying to be honest.

What is 'album club'? Are you allowed to talk about it?

[billyandthecloneasaurus]

What is 'album club'? Are you allowed to talk about it?

Yeah rule one of album club is you bang on about it endlessly until you piss everyone off.

We had a group of 7, we took it in turns picking an album each week, and every week we'd do a Skype video call where we'd share thoughts on each track and album as a whole (except matey in China who generally sent his thoughts to someone else to read, though he did turn up absolutely fucking battered at 2am his time to derail the entire call which was pretty funny in retrospect).  Was great fun, and Excel matey made a massive spreadsheet tracking all track ratings (out of 10 in increments of .5) and album ratings (out of 10 in increments of 0.1).

Every 8th week we'd do a SPECIALS week, where we'd all nominate 3 tracks each (best cover versions, best duets etc, rather than listening to the boiler 20 times every two months).

It was clearly getting to the point where people could actually do real life things instead so we finished it with a big 32 song knockout tournament (18 songs seeded by average rating, then we all got to nominate two tracks each from the rest).

Heaven or las Vegas got the bronze medal for best song ever which made me very happy, can't remember what won to be honest. Something SHIT that i didn't pick, probably!!

[DrGreggles]

I've been doing category-based online pop tournament things too.

Recent ones have been:
THE WORST NUMBER ONE SINGLE OF ALL TIME
THE BEST SONG WITH A NUMBER IN THE TITLE
THE WORST COVER VERSION OF ALL TIME

[Jockice]

The first album I bought on vinyl, The Undertones' debut is short but perfect. The original version was apparently 29.29 long but it was the re-released version, with the first two singles on it, that I bought. Still less than 35 minutes though. I love that album. And the band. Think I'll play it today.