I’m sure we’ve all shared this experience: you find an absolutely amazing album, whether it be through a friend, on a blog, or by another means. Then you start to listen to it. And you listen, and listen, and keep on listening. Eventually, like it or not, you listen to the album so many times that it starts to lose your attention. And it’s often then and there that you wish you could hear something new from the artist. You wonder, “When the hell will their next album come out?”
Flash forward two years to when they release that album. Imagine your disappointment when it sucks. That is, completely blows. As far a music goes, nothing tends to get me down more than that. And so, in the following list, I will share with you five instances in which bands that I love released absolutely terrible follow-ups. I will post a song from one of the artist’s good album(s). Then I will rail on the artist’s failure to live up to expectations. No doubt, some of my choices may be controversial. But hang with me–this is all my subjective opinion. I’m not expecting you to agree. You might, though.
5. Bloc Party
What went wrong?
When Bloc Party released their debut Silent Alarm in early 2005, Drowned in Sound’s Gen Williams described the album as mature and expansive, and noted that “the autonomy, creativity and sheer, elastic beauty that spans this debut more than justifies the rapidly accelerating hype that Bloc Party are currently generating”. Indeed, I got caught up in that hype: this album blew me away.
Unfortunately, Bloc Party set the standards too high with their new breed of tight, dancey UK post-punk. Though they had always been walking a fine and pretentious line, it is my opinion that they stumbled on their next two albums, A Weekend in the City and Intimacy. I’ll commend them for trying to change their sound by upping the experimental factor, but where they failed was in getting me to listen more than three times. There’s always next time, right? They’re a young group with a future ahead of them, and I maintain some faith in these guys. After all, Silent Alarm still lives on my iPod.
4. Cursive
What went wrong?
With each record that Cursive released, the band grew increasingly more amazing. Ultimately, Domestica set the stage for one of my favorite albums: The Ugly Organ. The album was remarkable for it’s storyline, and stands out in my mind as a perfect example of a “conceptual” album. It was not simply twelve of their best tracks in any particular order; rather, it was a musical piece of artwork.
Riding the crest of the Saddlecreek movement (captained by Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes), Cursive proceeded to release three new albums, each more and more disappointing–each sounding more and more like Tim Kasher’s side project, The Good Life. Artists evolve. Unfortunately for me, Cursive evolved in a manner that I couldn’t quite stomach. Maybe it was the fact that their cellist quit. More likely, it was me: the merciless angst-ridden songs are just too much emo for me to stomach these days
3. The Mars Volta
What went wrong?
Their first full album, De-Loused in the Comatorium, was a phenomenal work of art: a unified web of speculative fiction telling the first-person story of someone in a drug-induced coma, battling the evil side of his mind. Like Cursive’s The Ugly Organ, I think it is the unique conceptual approach to this album that hooked me in: when I listen to all 10 tracks in a row, I am at high risk of becoming completely and thoroughly absorbed.
The problem with near-perfect conceptual albums is that you need to somehow follow them up with a work of equal prowess. Unfortunately, Frances the Mute didn’t quite hit the right notes. While I find Pitchfork’s assessment of the album (“a homogeneous shitheap of stream-of-consciousness turgidity”) to be a little harsh, they were strikingly predictive of the work to come: Things just kept getting more redundant and drawn out with each subsequent release.
2. Air
What went wrong?
Air was on fire. Man, were they on fire. Their debut LP, Moon Safari (still among my favorites) was followed up with huge successes, including the Virgin Suicide’s soundtrack and Talkie Walkie. Six solid albums, and they had to go and ruin it with Pocket Symphony.
I remember when I first got their new album, I couldn’t wait to play it in my car as I drove from LA down to San Diego. The first two tracks seemed to be on-par. The third track, however, was absurd. For a second I thought it might have been a joke–what on earth would possess Air to sing like that? What followed was an exploration of mood and emotion, as Air tried as best as they could to produce an atmospheric bummer. The hummability and pop of prior albums were gone. In its place was a big, heaping spoon of boring.
1. The Arcade Fire
What went wrong?
This one’s going to get me in trouble, so let’s start where we all agree: Funeral was a bloody amazing album. It opened up new musical worlds, enrapturing listeners from start to finish. Upon release in 2004, the album blew up both critically and commercially. When they bought a run-down Church in Montreal to begin recording their second album, music geeks world-wide marked their calendars in anticipation.
Enter Neon Bible. The first time I listened to it, I hated every single second. In fact, I probably turned it off (I don’t quite remember). For me, the worst part was that half the work was out-of-tune. I’ll let Rolling Stone help me out on this one:
On Neon Bible, the reverb is so big and black that the beat becomes boom and the orchestral garnish, arranged by Chassagne and Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett, gets pressed to the margins. The result is a huge sound that only sparkles on the edges, leaving Butler alone in the middle, railing against rising tides, falling bombs and the nonstop rain of shit on television like he’s singing from the pulpit of an empty cathedral.
I tried to listen to the album a good ten more times, both alone and with other Arcade Fire fans. Unfortunately I just couldn’t get into it: I felt they’d lost their edge, and I was closer to annoyed than entertained. Pretty disappointing, indeed.