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Album Contrasts

Started by Hey, Punk!, May 28, 2020, 04:28:12 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Psmith

UB44 to Labour of Love.

I don't blame them,it was easier than actually writing songs themselves but that's when our relationship ended.

Quote from: BlodwynPig on May 28, 2020, 10:56:22 AM
The Final Cut ->> Momentary Lapse of Reason

The first considered a solo record in all but name. The second considered a solo record in all but name, by someone else.

mojo filters

Paul Simon: Hearts and Bones (1983) > Graceland (1986)

If we discount The Paul Simon Songbook (1965) for obvious reasons, he went from making his worst solo album straight to making his best!

Famous Mortimer

Lou Reed, "Sally Can't Dance" to "Metal Machine Music", then later the same year to "Coney Island Baby".

I call Graceland a collaboration as opposed to a solo album. The influence and contribution of the African musicians should not be discounted when assessing the greatness of this album. Not just a backing band surely?

dr beat

Quote from: studpuppet on May 29, 2020, 12:23:37 AM
Gillespie's bandwagon-jumping Screamadelica is a helluva jump from Primal Scream.

Primal Scream have form for that - the jump from Screamadelica (as much an Andrew Weatherall/Terry Farley project than PS) to Give Out But Don't Give Up is as much a lurch, as is that from the latter to Vanishing Point.

famethrowa

Quote from: MinnieTimperley on May 29, 2020, 10:52:52 AM
I call Graceland a collaboration as opposed to a solo album. The influence and contribution of the African musicians should not be discounted when assessing the greatness of this album. Not just a backing band surely?

That's true, but you could call most Bowie albums that too, right?

famethrowa


PaulTMA

I've never heard it, but Pat Metheny released Zero Tolerance For Silence in 1994, which swapped his usual jazz fusion or whatever he's supposed to do with 39 minutes of Metal Machine Music/Arc-esque noise, apparently so unlistenable that it was enthusiastically endorsed by Thurston Moore.  Seems he denied claims it was to end his contract with Geffen, though I believe he reverted to his original form with the following album, never to look back.

purlieu

It's basically him doing an avant/free-jazz style album entirely solo on guitar. He's talked about it in interviews a few times, giving explanations of what he was attempting, so it seems genuine. It's not too bad, as far as that kind of thing goes.


Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Psmith on May 29, 2020, 12:37:11 AM
UB44 to Labour of Love.

I don't blame them,it was easier than actually writing songs themselves but that's when our relationship ended.

Good call but I do have a soft spot for Geffrey Morgan (1984) Very underrated album by them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55XenfmIYEQ

the science eel

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on May 29, 2020, 02:54:22 AM
Lou Reed, "Sally Can't Dance" to "Metal Machine Music", then later the same year to "Coney Island Baby".

Berlin to Rock 'n' Roll Animal too. And probably a couple of others.

Sebastian Cobb

Gish and Siamese Dream are succinct brilliance, then The Smashing Pumpkins did Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

Many argue that this should've been whittled down. They are wrong, when Nirvana and Mudhoney were making punk sound overproduced, a double-album of pure self-indulgence is exactly what they needed to do.

Glyn

Quote from: purlieu on May 28, 2020, 07:36:08 PM
The Manics had a brief period of self-doubt at their commercial height which left them with a really bizarre run of albums. This is My Truth is a beautifully orchestrated, epic, atmospheric album of mid-tempo pieces, followed by the lo-fi claustrophobic production of the stylistically all-over-the-place Know Your Enemy. Then they went even further in the other direction with the icy, synthpop-tinged Lifeblood, and followed up with the backward-looking 'Guns n Roses meets the Clash' pomp of Send Away the Tigers, an intentional return to the sound of their first two records. That they started the run of albums as just about the biggest band in the UK and ended it as one of those groups whose core fanbase is big enough to get them into the album charts but unlikely to broaden any time soon is perhaps unsurprising.

To be fair though it wasn't as if they were particularly musically consistent before that.

The first album is  Guns N'Roses , the 2nd is glam/baggy/FM rock , 3rd is PIL/Magazine/Wire and the 4th was McAlmont & Butler style britpop.

Sin Agog

Scritti Politti's early musical Marxist credos to being the most '80s band ever on Cupid & Psyche.  I'm actually more into the latter I reckon.  There are many examples of fun post-punk dicking about, but not so much perfect pop just about ironic enough not to go full-on Bateman.  I especially like that moment at about 2 minutes 25 seconds into The Perfect Way when they accidentally invent The Mario Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-lwb4Pm2M4

Egyptian Feast

Absolutely. I like 'Skank Bloc Bologna', but the rest of the early scratchy stuff mostly leaves me cold. Leaving the squat and staying in bed at his parents' gaff until he came up with gold like 'Asylums In Jerusalem' was a wise move.

He hasn't released anything in a long time, but the last two Scritti albums are both great and quite a contrast from each other and his past work.

Cuntbeaks

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 1 > Selected Ambient Works 2.

BlodwynPig

oh I've got one

(Mike) Dykehouse's first album - a melancholy soaked piece of IDM/proto-Boards of Canada goodness [Dynamic Obsolescence]

Ultra Taboo

his next album [Midrange] - a shoegaze downer full of angst and beauty. Took me a while to get into the latter, but when I did!

Signal Crossing

Then he disappeared, resurfacing recently to spit out quite a varied selection of electronic music.

Sebastian Cobb

Venetian Snares knocking out a couple of classical albums.

purlieu

Quote from: Glyn on May 29, 2020, 09:08:13 PM
To be fair though it wasn't as if they were particularly musically consistent before that.

The first album is  Guns N'Roses , the 2nd is glam/baggy/FM rock , 3rd is PIL/Magazine/Wire and the 4th was McAlmont & Butler style britpop.
While I agree to an extent, I'd say there's a reasonably consistent sound in three of those, minus The Holy Bible. The production style changed, but those three albums are all largely energetic major key rock with big choruses that's quite obviously the same band. The contrast between Know Your Enemy and the albums either side of it is so striking that, were it not for James's vocals, I think it would take a lot of effort to convince someone it was the same band.

non capisco

I'd say Prince following up 'Purple Rain' almost immediately with 'Around The World In A Day' counts. An almighty pop/rock hybrid LP custom designed to sell a movie and shift serious units with every track a potential single.  Followed up in less than a year with a very idiosyncratic 80s take on psychedelia. There's an episode of Top Of The Pops that fades out with the kids gamely trying to have a shuffle about to 'Paisley Park', a song that sounds like a  circus clown on the brink of a nervous breakdown, all queasy calliopes and deliberately fractured vocals. It sounds like rotting candy floss. It's great but it's a bold choice for a single and quite a way down the river from 'Let's Go Crazy'.

Retinend

Can we just bitch about rubbish examples?

How about:

from...




classic indie pop (1998/2009)



to ...




charmless pop slop (2005/2013)

https://imgur.com/a/zGBwjtQ

sutin

Sparks! The kings of screwing the past for 50 years!

Indiscreet (1975) to Big Beat (1976)


Highly eclectic mid '70s glam art pop to straight forward meat and potatoes hard rock

Introducing (1977) to No. 1 In Heaven (1979)


Overproduced glossy AOR Beach Boys pastiche to icey Moroder-produced synth disco

Terminal Jive (1980) to Whomp That Sucker (1981)


Mainstream sleek disco pop to immature DEVO-esque bouncy new wave

Pulling Rabbits Out Of A Hat (1984) to Music That You Can Dance To (1986)

Mainstream synthpop for teenyboppers to hi-NRG experimental techno

Balls (2000) to Lil' Beethoven (2002)

Prodigy-aping techno to genreless vocal-led avant classical

Head Gardener

Quote from: non capisco on May 30, 2020, 10:43:47 PM
I'd say Prince following up 'Purple Rain' almost immediately with 'Around The World In A Day' counts. An almighty pop/rock hybrid LP custom designed to sell a movie and shift serious units with every track a potential single.  Followed up in less than a year with a very idiosyncratic 80s take on psychedelia. There's an episode of Top Of The Pops that fades out with the kids gamely trying to have a shuffle about to 'Paisley Park', a song that sounds like a  circus clown on the brink of a nervous breakdown, all queasy calliopes and deliberately fractured vocals. It sounds like rotting candy floss. It's great but it's a bold choice for a single and quite a way down the river from 'Let's Go Crazy'.

incredible




phantom_power

I Trawl The Megahertz by Prefab Sprout and any of their other albums. Cheating a bit as it was originally released as a Paddy McAloon solo album but it was intended to be a Sprout and album I think and was re-released as such. I am a bit obsessed with them at the moment. He is such a great classic song-writer and fyet their best work, IMO of course, is this sprawling jazzy classical opus with no real lyrics but fragments of things heard on late-night radio phone-ins cut together as spoken word poetry

Twonty Gostelow

Todd Rundgren lost plenty of fans who were on board with the pure pop of Something/Anything? in 1972 and baffled by the mescalin-induced stream of consciousness of A Wizard, A True Star a year later.

Side 1 Track 1 of the former: I Saw the Light
Side 1 Track 1 of the latter: International Feel

Alternative TV went from this:

Action Time Vision from 'The Image Has Cracked' (1978)

to this:

Smile In The Day from 'Vibing Up The Senile Man' (1979)

in the space of a year.  Both fantastic albums, but I can't help thinking Mark Perry might have had a nervous breakdown somewhere between the two.

NoSleep

Quote from: PaulTMA on May 29, 2020, 02:31:32 PM
I've never heard it, but Pat Metheny released Zero Tolerance For Silence in 1994, which swapped his usual jazz fusion or whatever he's supposed to do with 39 minutes of Metal Machine Music/Arc-esque noise, apparently so unlistenable that it was enthusiastically endorsed by Thurston Moore.  Seems he denied claims it was to end his contract with Geffen, though I believe he reverted to his original form with the following album, never to look back.

Three years later he released Sign Of 4 which also features guitarist Derek Bailey, the father of free improvisation; they're definitely not playing fusion.