So, imagine the editorial meeting if you will and the heated exchange which ended with the comment “so, what you’re saying is that it’s prog?“. Well, no, not Prog as such – obviously that would be ridiculous. Concept albums? Ha! Well, unless it Drive By Truckers or The Decemberists. And that Jon Boden chap is ok. No, what A Picture Made have produced is more of a concept single.
So, what’s a concept single? Well, suppose one has an album called ‘Heal‘, which has three bookmarking songs – the downbeat opener ‘Heal Me‘, the mid-album up-tempo rocker ‘Heal You‘ and the ecstatic closer ‘Healed‘ – what would be a great idea would be to put them together – to capture the progress of the album in a snappy six-minute single. Pretty cool – and this is what, thirty-five years down the road from their formation A Picture Made have done. And it sounds rather splendid.
