Complicated Merge

[baystateoftheart]

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The Wayward Bus by The Magnetic Fields

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The Wayward Bus / Distant Plastic Trees...tic Fields

These two albums have to be merged, but it's more complex than a usual merge, so I'd like to discuss it here first.

The Wayward Bus is the original title and it was originally issued in 1992 with 20 tracks - 10 new songs followed by 10 out of 11 tracks from their debut album Distant Plastic Trees. Since then it has been reissued several times, always with the same tracklist, but most recently with the title The Wayward Bus / Distant Plastic Trees. (Wikipedia claims The Wayward Bus was originally a 10-track release, but that is supported by no other source.)

So, these two should be one album on BEA with the title The Wayward Bus and a release date of 1992. It's not a compilation, because previously released tracks do not make up a vast majority of the record. But the question is, are the 10 songs from the prior album bonus tracks and therefore not part of the BEA tracklist? Or are they part of the core tracklist? There are inconsistencies in whether music sites use The Wayward Bus to refer to the first 10 tracks or the whole release. As far as I know, the band themselves have not weighed in. However, the fact that the reissue title is The Wayward Bus / Distant Plastic Trees suggests that The Wayward Bus refers to the first 10 songs and the last 10 are bonus tracks. Also, I would argue the official sales pages support the last 10 tracks being bonus tracks:

https://themagneticfields.bandcamp.com/...remastered
https://www.mergerecords.com/the-magnet...distant-pl

Thoughts?
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[albummaster]

You do pick them As far as I can tell, from the 1992 release tracks 11-20 are not listed as bonus tracks, but are tracks from a previously released album. Since there are 10 tracks from each album, this wouldn't be a compilation as the number of previously released tracks don't outweigh the new material. As you say, the complicating factor is that this album was subsequently marketed as a split release indicating the 20 tracks are from two different albums, but from what I can tell this album has never been released on its own and has always been accompanied by the other release, so my view would be to list all 20 tracks but not flag this as a compilation.

[baystateoftheart]

[albummaster]

I was thinking we could perhaps keep both releases here, one as the original release (on its own), and the second one as a split release. For the first album, the tracks from the second album would not be listed since they would be considered 'bonus' tracks and the second album can be listed as-is (as a split release compilation).