The presentation of music has come full circle. It used to be that artists would record a great song and a pretty good song, slap it on two sides of vinyl and call it a single. Pile up enough singles, and you have yourself an album.

Elektra rethought this concept in the 1960s and decided we'd be better off starting with the album and releasing the good cuts as teasers. Before long, the idea of a single seemed ridiculous. The songs got longer and albums morphed from collections of singles to masterpieces that hardly allowed radio to lift individual cuts. Think Pink Floyd, the Who, Yes--concept rock, rock opera, rock as art.

But somewhere in the '80s bands got tired. They wanted the old model back, but the old model wasn't selling any more. Albums got bogged down with filler, and by the end of the millennium, people were sick of shelling out 15 bucks for three good tracks and a bunch of crap. Enter iTunes and the rebirth of the single.

All of which is to say that Red Beard's How to Stay Afloat in Treacherous Waters is the first true album that's been released in decades. Start to finish, How to Stay Afloat... is one whole. Sure, you can pick the heavy hitters (Sea Goddess, Cope) and put them on the radio, but it's not the same. This is an album in the Elektra sense of the word—it's not a nascent collection of songs cobbled together after months of tracks have been cut. This is a single piece of material, artfully woven into a whole: A single release divided into individual tracks for convenience, not necessity.

Let the podheads snag a track here, a track there, and shuffle their ways through town, barely stopping to savor one sound, one feeling, for longer than three minutes, but Red Beard puts them to shame. You can't get any depth or revelation in a sound bite. You need more time for the process of creation. You need to peak, you need to spread it out. You need to learn to stay afloat in those waters.

But Red Beard, if I can take a moment and make this personal: You need to take even longer on the next one. Give us more than 30 minutes. You are the reason they put two sides on a record. Use them both, Red Beard. Dear God, use them both.

Red Beard