The art of the album opener

I’ve always been fascinated by how an artist or band chooses to begin an album. It can set the entire tone, especially if it’s a concept album – even a loose one.

“Voyager,” the first track on The Alan Parsons Project’s Pyramid, released in 1978, serves as a fine example of what an opener can do. It’s instrumental, but like just about all of APP’s stuff, the musicality is deep with high-orchestration, high-intelligence, and high-production – all around high-quality. I think you could even call it haunting.

It’s meant to be played right into the second track, “What Goes Up,” a song featuring this great lyric:

If all things must fall
Why build a miracle at all?
If all things must pass
Even a pyramid won’t last

The name “Voyager” could be a nod to the Voyager 1 and 2 probes launched in 1977 by NASA to explore interstellar space … all that universe beyond our solar system. The track has a spacey sound, and I can only imagine what it would feel like to break into the darkness and endless emptiness of deep space. Shouting into nothingness with no echoes in return.

It’s an interesting choice for an opener, though, since Pyramid isn’t really about space; there are other themes such as inevitability, death, afterlife, and isolation. However, one B-side track pokes fun at the short-lived but intense pseudoscientific phenomenon of pyramidology, particularly “pyramid power” that had re-risen in the mid- to late-1970s. (Yes, you should search what “pyramid power” is if you enjoy chuckling.)

The full-width cover for Pyramid, yet another classic by the English design house Hipgnosis. It’s rife with pyramids and pyramid shapes … even the Arista Records logo! I’m pretty sure that’s Alan Parsons on the bed. To me, he’s thinking to himself, “Please God, not another day of this crap.” (Photo provided)

There are so many great album openers across so many genres. “Voyager” is but one instance of the start of a prog rock expedition. If you have a good stereo system, turn it on and turn it up. Heck, you may as well listen to the whole album while you’re at it.

You can catch these occasional columns discussing bits and pieces of Isaac Taylor’s favorite music in the pages of The Reporter.