10 Concept Albums Tim Heidecker Thinks Everyone Should Own

The post 10 Concept Albums Tim Heidecker Thinks Everyone Should Own appeared first on Consequence .

Crate Digging is our recurring feature series that takes a deep dive into music history to turn up several albums all music fans should know. In this edition, comedian and musician Tim Heidecker makes his picks for the best concept albums of all time.

Tim Heidecker , when given the opportunity to suggest a topic for a Crate Digging, chose concept albums. This is because, he tells Consequence , “in a self-serving manner, I think I tend to put out concept albums” — including his newest studio album Slipping Away , as well as past releases like Fear of Death and High School .

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In terms of his own creative process, Heidecker says that when he’s working on a record, “I’m trying to think of what’s connecting it all — what I am trying to say or what I am trying to talk about, and how the songs can inform that idea. I think the record is obviously like not doing well as a concept, as a piece of art — like, the idea of an album. I think kids aren’t quite so tuned into that, but I’m a believer in it and I like albums that do that.”

Of course, the question of what a concept album is becomes important, and Heidecker fully acknowledges that it’s “kind of hard” to answer it. His definition, though, is a record with a point of view: “There’s a continuity to the songs, but it doesn’t verge into full-on rock opera or musical. There’s a lot of thought put into how the songs work together, and you could write a caption for what the album is about, more or less…”

He laughs. “Which I’ll attempt to do with these.”

Elvis Costello — The Juliet Letters

Each song is in the form of a letter: It’s a concept of imaginary letters being sent to an imaginary recipient. It’s very eclectic music because it’s a string quartet and Elvis Costello — but it’s a cool writing exercise, like, can these songs exist as something that you would read as a letter? There are love letters, there are breakup letters, there’s a cease-and-desist style of letter… I thought it was very creative and inventive and cohesive as a project. While it doesn’t tell a full story, it’s certainly a concept.

I discovered this when it came out, because I was a big Elvis Costello fan. He’s such a great lyricist. I’m such an admirer of his way with words, and this was a great exercise in showing how clever he can be.

The Juliet Letters : Stream | Buy

Randy Newman — Good Old Boys

It’s probably Randy’s most cohesive concept. I think it started out even more literal — the name of the original record was Johnny Cutler’s Birthday , and it was all about this guy who lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and all the songs are kind of from his perspective. That doesn’t end up being the full record — it veers off, which makes it less of a musical and more of a concept record, about the various voices of people from the South.

It’s a controversial record because the first song has got the N-word all over it. But he’s coming from the satirical place of talking about race and racism and definitely putting putting it on trial, or commenting on it from the right perspective. And it’s a beautiful record. I love the continuity of the music, the band that plays on it is top-notch, it’s got Southern flavor to it, and the songs are very funny. There are some very sad songs on it, too. It’s just a great capturing of a Northerner’s perspective of the South.

The great thing about the redneck song is he’s singing about this idea of a white man in the South, but he is also very critical of the North when it comes to race relations and how the ghettos of the big cities have been treating African-Americans, in a lot of ways just as bad as the South. Everybody’s on trial, on Randy’s record.

Good Old Boys : Stream | Buy

The Band — The Band

Also a record about the South from Northerners. I don’t know if I’ve seen [The Band’s second album] described quite as a concept album, but it’s very similar to Good Old Boys , in that I know Robbie Robertson wrote a lot of the songs after talking to his bandmate Levon Helm about growing up in Arkansas and telling stories about life in the South from their perspective.

I mean, obviously, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is a fascinating song, because it’s from the point of view of a poor Southern soldier, someone who isn’t too interested in the issues of the war itself, just kind of like, “I gotta do my duty.” And the whole record has this continuity of sound, that feels like these are characters who know each other or spend time together. A snapshot of a long-gone period of time.

The Band : Stream | Buy

Bob Dylan — Blood on the Tracks

An all-timer. This is the divorce record. This is the record you put on when you’re going through a breakup or thinking about breaking up. It feels like Dylan’s most personal autobiographical album; there are some very direct references to his own marriage, and again, it feels like all these songs belong together. It almost feels like a live record, in the sense that it feels like they just played one song and then kept rolling and played the next song. I don’t know how intentional the concept was — maybe it revealed itself after the fact. But it’s on my list as absolutely essential.

Blood on the Tracks : Stream | Buy

Warren Zevon — Life’ll Kill Ya

It’s his second-to-last record before he died, and a lot of the record is about an imminent fear of death, and anxiety about dying. And he does it in a very funny way, often. What I didn’t realize was that he made the record very shortly before we all found out that he was dying — I don’t think he knew he was dying when he wrote it. So it was released in 2000, and he came out that he had this inoperable cancer shortly after that. But he had the forbearing, or the clairvoyance I guess, to sing very openly and honestly about his mortality.

Certainly not every song is about about death, but even the ones that aren’t… He does a cover of “Back in the High Life Again” by Steve Winwood, and that’s not about death, but the way he does it on the record — it’s gorgeous. It’s beautiful and sad and is clearly about loss and death and mortality and stuff, the way he interprets it. So that’s a great, great record.

Life’ll Kill Ya : Stream | Buy

The Who — The Who Sell Out

We’re changing gears dramatically. [ Laughs ] I think this comes around the time of Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper’s . Just a really fun concept — the opposite of death. It’s a fun approach to make a record that really sounds like you’re listening to the radio of the time. They’ve got their songs and then in between the songs are jingles and radio commercials. It’s a great time capsule, full of classic pre- Tommy Who songs, and then you get a Heinz Baked Beans jingle. And the jingles are great songs about deodorant and drums and cars. It definitely inspired me, as a young kid, to see the humor in music.

The Who Sell Out : Stream | Buy

The Kinks — Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)

Ballsy title for a British band to put out in 1969. Very anti-your own people. But this is kind of a quintessential concept album — that and [ The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society ], which precedes this. I love them both almost equally — it’s almost like a great double album. But Village Green feels a little more nostalgic for a period of time in British culture, where this feels a little edgier, a little more critical of it.

“Some Mother’s Son” is a very harsh song about kids dying in the various wars that kept the empire going — it deals a lot with colonialism. And some of it’s very much about men and what do men do after a certain point in life and where is their place in life? Like, “Shangri-La” is about this guy who’s retired and now he just sits on his chair and watches TV all day long. It’s really thinking about my grandfathers and what life is about for them, but it’s also just filled with great pop songs and Ray Davies’s genius songwriting. So I go back to it all the time.

Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) : Stream | Buy

Ween — 12 Golden Country Greats

So this was a fun defining record for me — 1996, I was a fan of Ween’s previous album, Chocolate and Cheese , and I was excited for whatever they were going to do next. For this one, they went down to Nashville and they played with original session guys down there, Charlie McCoy and these other legends, to make a straight country record with insanely crazy Ween-style lyrics.

So it’s really funny, funny, funny lyrics, but genuinely great country music being played by the the guys that that played it on those records. It was not the music du jour, and it also opened me up to being like, oh, I like this kind of music. I wasn’t listening to Garth Brooks or any of that stuff of the time, but it opened me up to the country music of the ’60s and ’70s, which I genuinely love. I continue to hate modern country. Whatever’s popular right now is really insanely bad. But I just did Americana Fest and what you call Americana now, that comes out of the country tradition, that is a great wellspring of talent.

12 Golden Country Greats : Stream | Buy

Wilco — A Ghost Is Born

I don’t know how deep of a concept it is, but from what I understand it’s Jeff Tweedy coming off an addiction. Not that I’ve gone through withdrawal, but the whole record feels like withdrawal. It has an edge to it that’s real, that’s tense and serious. I wanted to include it on this list just to plug it as a record, because it’s an important record for me — I think it’s my favorite record of theirs. But it has a continuity to it. You could tell that [Tweedy] was going through some shit writing this one. Anytime an artist can travel through the music and into your brain and present to to you how they’re feeling — it’s kind of rare. It doesn’t happen all the time. But it’s special.

A Ghost Is Born : Stream | Buy

The Beatles — The Beatles

I actually only came up with nine [albums], but I just read a great article — I can’t cite who it’s from, but it said, if you listen to The White Album, pretend that it’s a demented children’s album and it totally works. Because really, there’s a lot of like children’s songs on it. “Piggies,” “Blackbird,” “Bungalow Bill,” “Birthday”… It could be the weirdest, craziest kids’ record of all time. I know it was just like a clearing house for all their songs, but, I mean, I love it.

The Beatles : Stream | Buy

To see Tim Heidecker on tour, get tickets here . His newest album, Slipping Away , arrives on October 18th via Bloodshot Records.

10 Concept Albums Tim Heidecker Thinks Everyone Should Own
Liz Shannon Miller