Not one of the first five DS albums has any bloat (even BIA which is nearly an hour long on CD), but once OES came out I think MK fell into the trap of putting more songs on each album than was needed. GH definitely falls into that category for me -it could have been a great 9 or 10 track album, but is too long.
I don’t hugely disagree the 10 songs selected above, although I have never liked Darling Pretty as the album opener.
I tend to agree with this, I checked my music library and I found that Golden Heart has a runtime of approximately 1 hour and 11 minutes. Don't get me wrong, I do like this album, but I agree that it would be improved by removing two or three of the weaker songs. I think there are some albums that do justify a runtime of 70 minutes (Blonde On Blonde and Physical Graffiti are two that spring to mind) but Golden Heart isn't quite consistently strong enough or sufficiently varied stylistically to justify it. One thing that I think doesn't help is that almost all of the songs tend to be of similar lengths, with the exception of Cannibals every track is between about 4 minutes 30 seconds and 6 minutes. I think Sailing To Philadelphia, while still not perfect, provides a better balance as it has a couple of relatively short concise songs (Who's Your Baby Now and The Last Laugh) as well as a longer solo with an extended solo (Speedway at Nazareth), making it easier to listen to as a whole.
I checked jbaent's truncated 10 song tracklist as well and found that it runs to about 51 minutes. Interestingly, if you add I'm The Fool or Done With Bonaparte to this hypothetical album, this 11 song version would run to 56 minutes, which is about the same length as The Ragpicker's Dream, which I find is the exception among his first four solo albums (there are a couple of tracks I could live without, but I do think the album is about the right length).
The first song I would personally leave off this album is A Night In Summer Long Ago, as there are other songs on this album which address similar romantic themes but have music I prefer. Nobody's Got The Gun is another song I would consider dropping as it feels a bit too similar to a couple of the others (it feels like a cross between Golden Heart and I'm The Fool) but I like the final guitar solo enough to not drop it first.
