Charles Mingus
“The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady”

This 1963 concept album by batshit musical genius Charles Mingus is widely recognized as one of the greatest compositions of all time. Written as a six-part jazz ballet, “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” is an incredibly emotional, beautiful experiment in orchestrated chaos. Mingus called this his masterpiece, and I wouldn’t argue with him (partly because I completely agree, and partly because arguing with Charles Mingus never ended well).

Deltron 3030
“Deltron 3030”

Deltron 3030 is/was a rap supergroup consisting of Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Dan the Automator and DJ Kid Koala, who released this space-opera concept album in 2000. It’s about the future, android and cyber warlords, has guest appearances up the wazoo from Damon Albarn to Prince Paul to Sean Lennon, and contains the line “Fuck dyin’, I hijack a mech” in the opening track. Need I say more?

Genesis
“The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway”

Before Peter Gabriel got busy playing Magnetic Fields covers, writing songs for Pixar soundtracks, and even before “Sledgehammer,” he was playing ringleader in the highly influential prog-group Genesis, who released the double concept album “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” in 1974. It’s about a Puerto Rican kid named Rael living in New York City who goes underground and explores cool shit like red corridors filled with carpetcrawlers, caverns of blinding light, and colonies of slippermen in order to find his brother, John, and in doing so, find himself, man… The lyrics are reminiscent of one of those early text adventure video games, and the instrumentation basically exemplifies the term progressive, making “Lamb” one of those records that still sound great even in these days of auto-tune and Gaga ladies and fully forgiving Genesis for ever releasing “I Can’t Dance.”

Titus Andronicus
“The Monitor”

New Jersey lo-fi punk band Titus Andronicus released this concept album in March to near universal acclaim. It’s based on the Civil War, as evidenced by song titles such as “A More Perfect Union” and “Four Score and Seven” and lyrics about how much being a soldier, having to shit yourself and watching people die all suck. It seems obvious and lame to compare this band and record to Bruce Springsteen, but it’s really more than appropriate with references to New Jersey, rambling piano solos, and lines like “Tramps like us, baby we were born to die” running rampant. “The Monitor” is a lofty project but not to a fault, because the band accomplishes everything they set out to do in its hour-and-five-minute run time. It plays out like a drunken, hopeless, sloppy “Born To Run” that’s not actually sloppy. And it fucking rocks.