Our Lady Peace's best and least successful album was a true concept album: Spiritual Machines.

There were these strange cheesy narratives in between songs which historically documented incidents of machines becoming smarter than humans. Like "1996...Deep Blue beets Gary Kasparov in a regulation chess tournament." The *concept* of the album was really, really stupid, but the music is far better than the derivative grunge they did before it and the watered down mainstream they did after.

And I can't believe The Who Sell Out hasn't been mentioned yet! It's much more a concept album than some of the others I've seen mentioned.

I'm of the opinion that Kinks' Arthur is the best one ever released. A tremendous overview of living in conservative, war-torn England.

Also I'm partial to Mike Watt's personal Contemplating the Engine Room. (there's even a reference to D. Boon sharing his love for CCR).

always nice to bring an old thread back to life.

Anyway, I've really been enjoying two Johnny Cash albums that I would call concept albums. They are Blood, Sweat and Tears, and Bitter Tears. Both are excellent albums, and Bitter Tears especially is one of the best Johnny Cash albums I have in my collection. I know that Johnny did a ton of these concept albums in the 60s and I'm really interested in picking up some more. After these two where should I go next. I'm thinking of getting 'JC sings songs of the old west' next because Marty Robbins 'Gunfighter Ballads' is a favorite of mine from my childhood and it seems to cover similar territory.

I've listened to just about all of the Mountain Goats stuff and I think Darnielle's two best albums are his two latest, both concept albums (in the story sense): "We Shall All Be Healed" and "Tallahassee."

I've only heard the Peel Session stuff from his newest album (plus an NPR interview/performance).

The only Johnny Cash stuff I've ever heard is his greatest hits, and it just seems so unremarkable to me that I'm at a loss to explain his critical acclaim.

It's a slow day, so I'm reaching back to some old threads. I think one of the ultimate concept albums is Zaireeka by The Flaming Lips. A friend of mine actually bought it and after finding four stereos, it actually does work. It was kind of fun to mess with all different combinations as well.

I really liked "Millennium/A Pop Opera", the concept album by the power pop group The Montgomery Cliffs. The songs were short and many held on their own outside the album theme of mankind on the dawn of the millennium. Quite different from the band's usual high voltage power pop.