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Which band has caused you the most disappointment?
Some people tend towards things like REM's post IRS years compared with what came before.
I like the last few Sonic Youth albums, but taken together they do look pretty stagnant.
Maybe it's just me, but Die!Die!Die! seem to have gone from the most vital EP around a few years ago to an increasingly diluted version in their last couple of releases.
I had a good example the other day that I can't remember now.
What are yours?
Is it fair to say Wolf Parade?
I really like both their second and third albums, but I've always dreamt of another classic, and listening to their debut & side projects you'd think they could produce better albums on auto pilot.
Also Nas, undoubtedly one of the most talented rappers ever, but continuously fails to impress with his albums. Every couple of years I get excited when he drops a banger only to find the album is inconsistent mush.
these are all bands that I was a huge fan of at the time
who then released a disappointing album and never regained their former brilliance
New Order (Technique onwards - I know a lot of people rate Technique highly but I think it is pants and it was a huge dissapointment to me after Low Life and Brotherhood)
The Smiths (Strangeways was an anti-climax, and then Morrissey and Marr's ensuing solo careers - such sad squandering of talent)
R.E.M. (Out Of Time onwards)
Talking Heads (Little Creatures onwards)
Pixies (Bossanova was poor and then Trompe was even worse)
I've just decided that Talking Heads called it a day after Speaking In Tongues
= no disappointment (10 years of really quite shit, wacky music)
Yeah, I'd go with this
Just listening to their best-of, they go from interesting to amazing to uh-oh to NOOOOOOOO
Far as I'm concerned, after Speaking In Tongues, they only recorded Blind, Nothing But Flowers and Sax and Violins. Nothing else.
funny, i was thinking of including EXACTLY those 3 songs
but for the sake of impact and brevity i didn't. The last two you mentioned are excellent songs.
New Order piss on the memory of Joy Division
And probably besmirch their own memory too.
Used to love New Order in pre-Technique days, but hearing them butcher Love Will Tear Us Apart...sorry that should have read "Love Yeah! Will Tear Us I can't hear you Hyde Park Apart Woop!" possibly ruined my entire life.
Technique? Pants???
Are you insane sir?
apparently so
I was a huge, huge New Order fan when it came out, having got into them through buying Low Life (on the basis of a Neil Tennant review in Smash Hits) and then working backwards (eventually all the way back to Joy Division) ... they were the first band I saw live (at Slough Fulcrum in 1985 - in fact, my first three gigs were New Order) ... I loved Brotherhood when it came out too and had massive anticipation about Technique ... but it was, and still is, awful - just a load of clumsy half-arsed attempts at dancey pop songs with crap tunes, lame lyrics and horrible production ... believe me, I really tried to like it - I played the thing to death, but eventually I just had to admit defeat
Weird
When I first heard it played it over & over for about 8 hours, didn't leave my room I was so amazed, and I must've listened to it at least once a week every week for the last 22 years. Love it to death. Mr Disco, Love Less, Vanishing Point...absolutely sublime. And surprised you say the lyrics are lame - they're probably the most personal, heartfelt lyrics Barney has ever written, and compared to some of the crap he comes out with they're practically poetry :)
Classic Answer = Post Coming Up Suede.
Though some might argue post dog man star, i still very much like coming up.
Recently
Interpol - Our Love to Admire was rubbish and since...
Band of Horses - Cease to Begin - solid gold, Infinite Arms - complete toss
Agree entirely on both of these
i tend not to bother with a band's new output if they cause me more than one disappointment
weezer
Oasis.
Swapped Be Here Now with a mate and ended up with Vitalogy. So I was over it pretty damn quickly.
Morrissey
(though admittedly not a band) has upset more people with gig cancellations and lukewarm solo efforts than any other artist or musician in history
probably
shut your face
Vauxhall and I, Your Arsenal, and Bona Drag are absolute 5 star albums I reckon. Viva Hate is pretty good, Refusal is realy quite decent, My Early Burglary Years is a mint compilation. His solo stuff, with the exception of Maladjusted and Quarry imo, is fucking A-grade. Even Kill Uncle has some priceless moments on it.
Gig cancellations is fair critism though.
Badly Drawn Boy
Jesus Jones' Perverse was only a shadow of the magnificent Liquidizer and Doubt records.
^
Truest thing ever posted.
Zeroes and ones - yeah! This is gonna be pretty good actually!
The Devil you know - ok Mike, ok, not too bad, bit of filler, now unleash the hits!!!
...
...
...
by the time 'the right decision' comes on, curled up crying on my beanbag.
Also,
NOT happy with The Farm's output after Spartacus.
I don't want to admit to it, but... yeah.
Is it wrong of me to think that he still might release something worthwhile at something in the future?
Jesus Jones are, believe it or not,
the closest to anything that we have ever experienced of a singularity — something that is completely contained within and defined by the very moment of its happening.
Strictly speaking, we can never actually experience the pure singularity, since the moment it were over, everything about it would also be over, hence it would no longer exert any force over us (over our actions nor over our memories) and any effects it may have had would no longer actually be effective. It would be *as if it never happened* — purely and utterly, which is the same as saying that it *didn't* happen.
So, Jesus Jones do not amount to the utterly singular, but the unmatched gravity of their singularity can be measured by the extraordinary rarity with which their one-time existence resounds outside of 1991. They live on in but the faintest of traces (such that "living on" greatly over-substantialises their irreducible non-singularity), in the dust covered CD case positioned in the least accessible nook of the CD shelf; in the spooky sense of déjà-vu-cum-jamais-vu felt when watching the DVD boxset release of some early-90s TV police drama that features a snippet from one of their at-the-time MASSIVE hits to soundtrack the action; in the uncanny, near-unanticipatable use of "Right Here, Right Now" as the theme song to a failed Democratic presidential candidate campaign, which in turn proves the fragility of the track by virtue of the latter's disappearance in the shadow of the monumental irony of its use; and so on.
Truth be told, any and every act of remembrance of Jesus Jones — as exceptional and eccentric as they are — in itself borders on an event of world-historical significance, a testament to the power of the human mind to lift the inimitable, the solitary, the unique, out of the very conditions that define it thus and into the realm of the thinkable, but a testament also (thereby) to humanity's complete incapacity to ever experience the event as such. For that reason, we owe bamos an irrecompensable debt of gratitude for re-igniting the memory of what has been all but erased or eroded by the sands of time itself.
I don't even know Jesus Jones beyond a song or two
but I enjoyed this post
Super Furry Animals
get the fuck out
of here
Broken Records..
There EP and live show hinted at a great band.. Album was banal rubbish it makes me sad.
Tricky
Really no need to bother with anything post-Pre-Millenium Tension, PJ Harvey or no PJ Harvey.
Good shout.
Hmmm.
I've really enjoyed Juxtapose and Mixed Race.
But I get what you're saying.
Juxtapose was fantastic
Probably my favourite of his.
Angels With Dirty Faces was nice too - the most typically creepy Trickyish Tricky record.
But Blowback was dire. I went through the usual denial period trying to like it, but just couldn't. Why didn't I see the warning signs? The Chili Peppers were on it! Can't believe I wasted a blank MiniDisc to carry it out.
His last three or four albums have been pretty anonymous
but Maxinquaye to Juxtapose are mostly excellent.
I reckon Angels.../ Juxtapose pretty much laid the foundations of British pop and rap/ grime now.
Blowback is mostly shit, but even that has its moments.
Orbital
although In Sides was a tough album to better their output after was pretty much stinks.
I also think that the latest Belle and Sebastian Album shows they're on the wane.
Appeal to shift the cut-off by one album:
The Middle of Nowhere is great.
The Altogether is not.
Perhaps it's the stylophone...
but I haven't listened to it in a long time I'll give it a go now and see if your appeal can be upheld. It does have the best Orbital album cover by far, all the CD single covers released from that album are great too.
Bloc Party
Wolf Parade
Hope Of The States
So much promise wasted...
I thought the second album was pretty good.
Disappointing that they split up more than a case of "they got shit"
Wasn't much of a fan of Left
But I didn't hate it nearly as much as some people, though. I'm more disappointed they split because I always reckoned they had enough talent to make a true masterpiece (I find The Lost Riots tails off towards the end)
The Lost Riots tails off after The Black Amnesias
They still rank as pretty much my favourite B-side band in history.
If they'd saved these and some of the demos they had floating around for an LP it'd have been amazing
Kings Of Leon after the 2nd album
I was something of a believer with the first 2 records. Couldn't shake the disappointment of the 3rd, the 4th was an abomination, the 5th is the sound of a band picking up the pay cheque and giving up.
^ so much this!
:(
*1st
spot on
ctrl-f "Ryan Adams"
No? Well, him then.
Duran Duran
Medazzaland was the first album of theirs that i bought and with all its screeching guitars, moody pop songs drenched and reverb and distortion and hypnotic ballads about suicidal stalkers, it made Duran Duran seem to be a counterpart of latter-day Depeche Mode. And then i learned that they made only one album like that :(
It is still one of my favourites though
Devo
So much genius, so quickly turned to shit.
Also: Rod Stewart.
Its hardly consistent disappointment, but after their first two MARVELLOUS albums,
The Cooper Temple Clause released a right stinker, and that upset me a smidge.
Plenty
Depeche Mode since Alan Wilder left
Nick Cave from about 2003 onwards
British Sea Power for everything since their debut
Tom Waits for publicly disowning half his back catalogue
New Order for shitting over their legacy on a seemingly daily basis
I think a more difficult question would be Which band has NEVER disappointed you? Very hard to think of one.
Surely there's no such thing
as a band that has never dissapointed someone. Look deep enough into their catalog and you'll find something trite.
A Perfect Circle.
Great debut, so-so (at best) follow-up, and then a scrappy, crappy covers album. Big.Fail. :/
Agreed with eMOTIVE, but Thirteenth Step is bitchin'.
There are loads, but they all only have 1 or 2 records
Sleater-Kinney, Electrelane, KaitO, The Delgados, Arab Strap, Life without buildings, Au Pairs, Prolapse... Maybe Liars?
That's a pretty good shout about Tom Waits.
Love all his stuff and went to see him twice a couple of years back and when i heard that there was no chance of him playing his early stuff i was really quite disappointed. Still amazing gigs though but would have been nice to have heard something off blue valentine or the heart of saturday night.
Exactly.
He said in an interview recently that he was embarrassed about his early stuff, which personally I find insulting. I'd rather see him perform Martha or Grapefruit Moon than watch him bellow yet another average junkyard blues number through his fucking megaphone. Don't get me wrong, I love all stages of Tom's career but to disown some of the jewels in his back catalogue that way is criminal. Saw him at Hammersmith in 2004 and Invitation to the Blues was the high spot of the night. Listen to his Glitter & Doom live LP, which consists solely of his shouty blues numbers, & you hear an absolute genius wasting his talent.
Still shits all over Dylan as a live act though.
I don't really understand why you'd find this insulting
plenty of musicians and artists and so on dislike their older material, which is just fine.
Is this really a fair criticism?
I think any artist has the right to not play songs that are something like 20-30 years old. It's not so much a case of 'disowning', just moving on and saving onself from becoming an old trundling nostalgia act.
You make a lot of sense here
but I disagree about Nick Cave.
Nocturama was shit but everything before or since is well worth space in anyone's record collection.
The Libertines.
By existing. Shite. And a template for a whole load of other shite, too.
Can I take that THIS back...
Libertines didn't disappoint me, as I had no expectations.
The British Courts System has sorely disappointed me on numerous occasions by letting the pie faced skiffle merchant out onto the streets when he should have been banged up getting passed round like a dirty sock.
haha!
Explosions in the Sky
Probably a bit controversial seeing as everyone here loves them.
I love them too, but that last album... it just sounds like after 'earth is not a cold dead place' they just left all their instruments and all their effects pedals and all the amps set up in the studio, went back to the very same studio and didn't change any settings, got the same producer and just recorded another few songs for 'all of a sudden...' and then did EXACTLY the same for 'Take Care...' it just sounds like they're rehashing the same old thing all over again. The songs just seem to have exactly the same formulas and the Dynamics don't change.
It just sounds lazy to me.
snare rolls and twiddly pretty guitars
and i find them largely disappointing live. seen them 4 times and once at the astoria was great but typically they are a bit tepid
Not everyone here loves EITS.
You're about 4 years late to sacrifice that sacred cow.
Would say though that I don't see how EITS sound any more samey across their albums than 99.9% of other acts. They get picked up on it fairly often, more often than most, though.
I don't want to talk about it
Its too upsetting. Maybe in a few years.
Radiohead.
It all went down hill after Pablo Honey
(The) Verve
following A Northern Soul with Urban Hymns (bar a couple of tunes) what a let down.
Yeah, that must've been disappointing
Still prefer A Storm In Heaven myself.
Always the shitter one that sells by the bucketload, eh?
Hundred Reasons
LOVED the first album, played it to death. The chunky, overdriven production worked for the songs, and it was a short, great record.
The second one (Shatterproof Is Not A Challenge, the name should have been a clue to avoid it) had some 'progression' (songs that change time signature! ooh!) and too many slow, boring songs about relationships. Too much forced maturity overall. And the D.Sardy production finally grated for me - it sounds so dated now, so early '00s Pro Tools rock.
The first one was like, 'we may not be the most talented band, but we're going for it anyway' and was enthusiastic and fun - the second and subsequent are just trying too hard. They still pulled out the odd great tune, but still.
They're no Hell Is For Heroes is what I'm saying.
Kill Your Own was pretty good when i heard it
but yes, they are not HI4H.
Suede - post Coming Up
I remember not being very impressed by Pulp deciding to re-release 'deluxe' editions of three of their albums, but that was more about feeling ripped off rather than anything musical.
Ooh, also: British Sea Power
Sounded like they were going to be a genuinely exciting and interesting band when they came out, instead they just released a stream of increasingly shit albums (Decline of... is good though).
daft punk
the musical jump from 'homework' to 'discovery' killed me.
So un-^ this
Discovery is fucking amazing. The jump to Human After All on the other hand... ergh...
Brakes
Give blood was/is great. Everything since is rubbish.
Patrick Wolf
Ace first couple of records, then The magic positin and the Bachelor were so-so, and now the new one is shit
Black Flag
Audioslave
Smashing Pumpkins
Brujeria
I have given this some thought throughout the day...
In order to give you the MOST disappointment a band can't go
GREAT>SHIT...
because then you wouldn't buy any more of their records (would you?)
I think the most disappointment I've ever had has been from a band who went like this
2/3 records of phenomenal beauty and power > pretty good records but not as good as their initial work for record after record after record.
Thus I have never bought a BAD record by this band and therefore I keep buying them and keep building up a cumulative disappointment.
Ladies and gents what I am leading up to is this one word......
TINDERSTICKS
The mighty Sticks
have never disappointed me as such, just underwhelmed me a little with every release since the brilliant Simple Pleasure.
Yeah that's kind of what I mean (although I don't rate Simple Pleasures with their absolute peak)
A continued succession of rather underwhelming releases
curiously, that's how my wife described
our honeymoon.
Been following the Sticks since 93,
seen them live more than any other band. Second album has to be their high creative mark, but I enjoy Simple Pleasures more than any of their other work. I was at the album launch gig in a small church in Brixton, to see them come out dressed in denims rather than suits & play a set of Stax-esque soul tunes was jaw-dropping, and the first airing of I Know That Loving has never left me.
Last few albums haven't scaled those heights though they still have plenty of great tunes - Boobar, Yesterday Tomorrows, No Place So Alone etc. Great band.
Les Savy Fav
The Thermals
Idlewild
I had tickets to see them in Cardiff, circa 2000 and 100 Broken Windows. When I eventually saw a bearded Woomble and co in 2009, they weren't the same. Yes, they've had a few affable tunes but... you know. You really know.
Form
Die! Die! Die!'s latest is pretty amazing if you ask me (you didn't)
Hell, which HAVEN'T ??
- I anticipated The Vaccines. I put the album on, & every song sounds like the one before it! They couldn't even last one record, like...
- The Strokes. One album. Period.
- I can't list 'em all. Let's just say I get all my music from Dave The Spazz or Rex on WFMU nowadays.
Daft Punk post Discovery
Blur when The Great Escape came out (although they got it back later)
ABBA
:(
if you ignore the singles
the Great Escape has got some amazing bits on it. It's not a superb album, but He Thought of Cars is my favourite thing they've ever done.
if i liked them in the first place
Noah And The Whale would piss me off a lot these days
Muse
I love the first three, but post Absolution they've just been a camp clone of themselves.
and I'm almost ashamed to say this, but Jewel. I fell in love with Pieces Of You when it came out, but she never did anything like that album again. Apparently there's more money in country-pop.