"The 100 Most Middling Albums Of All Time!"

[mayer]

Bowie

Without wanting to derail it too much. I just realised that much as I adore David, I've given Tonight three listens, and Never Let Me Down just the one. To me, they're not middling albums, they're downright shocking. I've never given them a fair crack though, and I've had those LPs for about five years. When I get my records together I should really give them a fair chance. I gave Tin Machine a lot more of a crack at it, but Tin Machine had enough on a first listen to keep me interested.

I think that when people suggest that Bowie's 90s stuff was "out there" and at odds with his "pop song" stuff, they've not actually heard the stuff. Outside, We Prick You, and of course, Little Wonder (with its Under Pressure/Heroes ish chorus) are very very poppy, as are other tracks on those LPs.

Back on topic. Sort of. Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold The World. Middling both. Grasping at being great albums but falling short by a long long way.

Off Bowie, more middling LPs. The Velvet Underground - Loaded, Ramones -End Of The Century, Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures AND Closer (maybe more "imperfect" than middling... I adore both, but they're very very flawed. I Remember Nothing, Atrocity Exhibition, Candidate, etc. too much stuff that doesn't match the albums' heights).

The Beatles - Rubber Soul, Mansun - Attack Of The Grey Lantern (I love it, but something's missing), Jesus And Mary Chain - Darklands (same again), The Clash - Give 'Em Enough Rope, The Clash - Sandinista!, The Libertines - The Libertines, Massive Attack - 100th Window and Super Furry Animals - Rings Around The World.

Not terrible, any of them, but not fabulous. They sit in the middle. Some of them have tracks that are just amazing (Norwigean Wood, Darklands, April Skies, Tommy Gun, One More Time, The Man Who Would Be King), but as albums they nestle in that middle shaped hole between love and hate, just.... doing.... okay.

These albums are the Minister wanting to know he's done okay, and Humpy, Bernard, the cabbie, his missus all reassuring him that.... "you've done... okay"

[23 Daves]

I'm not backing down on MLIR at all I'm afraid,

Well, you can apologise all you like, but I'm still waiting to see you quantify the apparent lack of hooks/provide examples of "buzzy guitars".

]

Well, if I must... "Advert" and "Chemical World" both have tons of buzzy guitars on them, and I didn't say anything about "lack of hooks" in my original post.  The album does have hooks, but they're a bit by-numbers, really, with the exception of "For Tomorrow" which is superb.  Oh, and "Turn It Up" is puerile nonsense even Weezer would have left off an album.

I admit that I didn't actually see them live at this point, though, so I can't fairly answer your point on that.

I will concede that "The Great Escape" has disappointing moments on it, but when I listened to it again for the first time in ages last week, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I loved a lot of the material.  I actually think it's a superior album to "Parklife", or at least certainly a more cohesive one (and yes, I know the lack of cohesion in "Parklife" was actually deliberate).

Next week:  Daves writes about how "Be Here Now" was actually a brilliant album, and not "Definitely Maybe" like you thought (except er, no he doesn't).

[Frinky]

Well, if I must... "Advert" and "Chemical World" both have tons of buzzy guitars on them

By "buzzy", you really mean, then, "fuzzy", as there's a world of difference. That's not me being pedantic, either - the tones are all very varied on that album which seems these days to be something of a rarity. I'm not sure if you're musically inclined or not, but there's a hell of a lot of work that goes into the production/recording methods to get the guitars to sound like they do on both those songs, Chemical World especially. There's so much to keep the ears busy, even if you don't like the songs, sonically, it's not a "middling" album.

I'm not sure how you can say that most of the album hooks are "by the numbers" and then say that For Tomorrow is "superb" when it's just a bunch of C and G chords, a couple of "la la la's" and a snappy phrase at the end of it? You couldn't ask for a more by the numbers song. Are you sure you really don't like MLIR? Or are you doing it for the sake of controversy?

Any album with plenty of memorable hooks and melodies and phrases can't be mediocre, can it? Surely you just don't remember a middling album?

I'd reccomend picking up "Starshaped" on DVD, so you can get a taste of how the live material worked.

[trotsky assortment]

'End Of The Century', middling?!  Gah.  Granted, it's no 'Ramones' or 'Leave Home', but it's full of gems.  The thing which gets me about the album though, is when people jabber about Phil Spector forcing them into a direction they needn't have gone...which frankly, is bollocks, since most of those songs were written before the wiggy fruitcake was on board.

lankin, mate:  as a fully paid up member of 'The Lamb' fan club, I'll have to disagree with you.  I love 'Trespass' too.
I agree with earlier comments about 'Wind And Wuthering' from Sutton, though.  Sure, it never feels as instant as 'Trick Of The Tail', but it has some truly wonderful moments.

While I'm here, it reminds me...I really dislike those people who insist the spirit of old Genesis left with Peter Gabriel.  Those two albums after 'The Lamb' contain some of the band's finest work.  If anything, the spirit of old Genesis left when Hackett moved on.

For my money, if I'm going to nominate a Genesis album as middling, it'd be 'Abacab'.  That's only middling by the skin of its teeth though, as anything containing 'Whodunnit?' will always verge on terrible.

[23 Daves]

Well, if I must... "Advert" and "Chemical World" both have tons of buzzy guitars on them

I'm not sure how you can say that most of the album hooks are "by the numbers" and then say that For Tomorrow is "superb" when it's just a bunch of C and G chords, a couple of "la la la's" and a snappy phrase at the end of it? You couldn't ask for a more by the numbers song. Are you sure you really don't like MLIR? Or are you doing it for the sake of controversy?

Frinky, I swear to God, I don't think MLIR is a particularly special album.  I am at best a mediocre and somewhat unimaginative musician, and have little first-hand experience of production techniques (my experience is limited to banging demos out quickly), but I'm afraid I honestly can't hear what you're talking about.  

And there's some fantastic moments in "For Tomorrow", it's one of those moments of wonderment that sounds as if it really should have been thought of and written before but clearly hadn't been.  The press almost dismissed it as being a bit "ELO" or "The Move" in its stylings, but the truth is there's nothing in the back catalogue of either of those bands that I've heard that sounds identical, though I freely admit that sonically there are many similarities.   It was on the strength of that single that I purchased the album, I hadn't really been that interested in Blur before that point.

There might - possibly - be a sub-conscious kneejerk reaction against the album with me for the pure and simple reason that it's given high praise for helping kickstart a movement, but then again I genuinely seldom listen to it.  

(Oh dear, my wife's just diagreed with me as well... believe it or not, we have two copies of it in our house... though when Blur played Canada to promote the CD, she distinctly remembers them being pissed off their heads and not brilliant live at all.  In fact, Alex was barely vertical and she remembers members of the audience in the balcony above dropping bits of paper and unlit fag stubs on his head to see if he'd notice.  He didn't seem to, they stayed clinging to his hair).  

[Suttonpubcrawl]

For my money, if I'm going to nominate a Genesis album as middling, it'd be 'Abacab'.  That's only middling by the skin of its teeth though, as anything containing 'Whodunnit?' will always verge on terrible.

NOOOOOOOOOO! [/George Lucas script]

Abacab's another one of my favourites. Whodunnit? is great! It's so bizarre and silly, it's just very fun and an interesting bit of experimentation that I'm surprised but glad they put on the album. I think the main weaknesses of the album are the last three tracks, but they each have something worth listening to.

To be honest, it'd be easier to talk about the Genesis albums I don't like than the ones that I love, because there are so many of those. So talking about the ones I don't like is what I will now do.

I don't even really think of From Genesis To Revelation as a proper Genesis album, it's really not good at all. The hand of Jonathan King has clearly left its mark.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Trespass is fairly lightweight apart from The Knife, with White Mountain showing some good signs of things that would later be developed.

Lamb is an album that I've always felt is longer than it should be and has far too much filler, and a lot of the songs on it don't really develop or go anywhere. It doesn't hold my interest.

And Then There Were Three is a middling album, definitely. Not much brilliant, a few things which aren't up to much. When I first got it I really liked it, then quickly grew bored of it and that's how it still is for me. It's interesting to listen to occasionally but never quite interesting enough.

Invisible Touch has already been covered by me in this thread, so that just leaves We Can't Dance. I haven't ever listened to this all the way through, I can't bring myself to do it. Phil Collins's voice sounds awful, it's full of dreadful soft rock rubbish. It has absolutely no charm whatsoever. I can't listen to more than a few minutes of anything on it without feeling a bit depressed about what happened to such a great band.

It's interesting to note that with the exception of FGTR (not really Genesis, rubbish) and We Can't Dance (just appallingly awful, it's like an entire album full of In To Deep), all the albums I've listed there would fit in this thread. They're not terrible, they're not brilliant, they're just alright. If I had to sit down and listen to them there would be no complaint, I like them well enough. They're just not very exciting and in comparison to their better albums end up looking rubbish. Now this brings up an interesting point: Does your opinion of an album's quality vary depending on who made it? I'm normally quite hard on some of those albums that I listed, but if they were by some other band I might be more lenient just because I wouldn't be comparing them to other things I like better and thinking "come on, you can do better than that!". It can work the other way though, I'm more willing to listen to an album I'm not that keen on if it's by a band I like, just because I have that much more reason to be attached to it.

[trotsky assortment]

And Then There Were Three is a middling album, definitely. Not much brilliant, a few things which aren't up to much. When I first got it I really liked it, then quickly grew bored of it and that's how it still is for me. It's interesting to listen to occasionally but never quite interesting enough.

Yeah.  Definitely middling.  None of the songs are terrible, but there's a Hackett-shaped hole needing to be filled desperately.  I must confess to adoring 'Many Too Many' though.

[lankinpark]

Cor, tons of Genesis stuff to reply to here. To avoid lots of confusing quoting, I'll just go through album by album.

FGTR - Might as well not exist.

Trespass - Like I said above, beautiful insignificance. The Knife really doesn't fit, because it's (a) quite heavy, and (b) remembered. It's probably my least favourite on here, because it feels like an abberation. I love the other five songs to bits, but once Nursery Cryme comes along it's like they never happened. It's more an Ant Phillips solo album than a Genesis album.

Nursery Cryme - Three good long songs, two great shorter ones (For Absent Friends & Harold the Barrell), and a couple of weak attempts to emulate Trespass. Doesn't hold together perfectly, but it's better than...

Foxtrot - An album of two sides. The first half is dominated by the two longer tracks (Watcher is good, Get 'Em Out never stays in one place long enough to make an impression), so the two fairly average shorter ones feel pointless. Supper's Ready is mighty though, and the second best big climax the band would ever do (the best being Los Endos).

Selling England By The Pound - Superb. Covers it all, really. Complex and simple, serious and silly, vocal-based and instrumental, heavy and delicate, beautiful and ugly. And very, very English. Hackett and a not-yet-mad Gabriel seem to be the driving forces here. Far more of a concept album than Lamb.

The Lamb... - See above. Gabriel's gone mad and someone seems to have pressed the mute button on Steve Hackett.

Trick of the Tail - Gorgeous all the way through. Looking at it track by track it's got a few duffers (Mad Man Moon, the title track, Robbery, Assault and Battery) but the overall feel of it is lovely. the Volcano-Squonk-Endos movement is particularly effective.

Wind and Wuthering - Middling, I suppose, in that it's half-good and half-bad. The version I have on my mp3 player misses out Wot Gorilla?, Your Own Special Way and All In A Mouse's Night, replaces them with Inside and Out and has a shortened version of One For The Vine with the vocal bits cut out that I knocked up in a bored few minutes. It works pretty well.

And Then There Were Three - I think we're all agreed here. My standouts are Undertow and Many Too Many, and the rest is a sludge of averageness.

Duke - Think I was a bit harsh above. The first two tracks are good, Turn It On Again is great, the ending suite is good, Phil Collins's contributions are awful, the rest is decent enough. But it takes so many listens to get to the point where you can tell he songs apart that it's gonna have to come under "middling".

Abacab - Great stuff. There's a loose concept (as in theme, not story) behind all this. It's all about selling out/progressing and embracing '80s synth pop. The three solo-written songs represent the individual band members both lyrically and musically. Tony Banks (Me and Sarah Jane) is the synth-based dreamer, Phil Collins is the lonely man on the corner, and Mike Rutherford is bland and forgettable. Abacab is a mission statement - a catchy pop song with a modernised "prog" ending which demonstrates exactly why the old Genesis doesn't work in 1981. Keep It Dark speaks for itself - why keep it dark when there's a world of light to explore? Dodo/Lurker is about death and evolution and that sort of thing. And it's the opposite of the title track - a complex(ish) song that fits firmly within the synth-pop genre the band are embracing. Whodunnit? is pure synth experimentation. No Reply At All is the most blatant pop song the band ahd put out at that point. no attempt to disguise it as prog or give it a tricky time signature any more - this is 1981 Genesis, and it isn't ashamed to be a pop band. Lyrically, it's also full of "what do you want me to do?" type sentiments. Another Record is clearly all about a band finding themselves in a new musical environment and struggling to fit in - "There's an old rock 'n' roller, he's got nowhere to go", "Did he think about changing his name, somebody tell him it's the same old game". The whole album is a challenge to the fans - this is what we're doing, take it or leave it. Like It Or Not.

Genesis - Some more great progressive synth-pop (Mama, Home By The Sea), more mainstream pop (That's All, Illegal Alien) and the beginning of the end (Taking It All Too Hard, It's Gonna Get Better). First side good, second side less so.

Invisible Touch - Depressing. Domino's okay and The Brazillian could have been interesting, but I wouldn't say there was a single song on here that I liked. It suffers from the same problem that most albums made in the mid 1980s suffer from - it was made in the mid 1980s.

We Can't Dance - I actually think this is an improvement, because there are a few songs on here I actually like. No Son Of Mine is better than the entire Invisible Touch album. Driving The Last Spike, Dreaming While You Sleep and Living Forever are all pretty good. Unfortunately everything else is shite.

Calling All Stations - Oh, I don't know. Too many failed pop songs, too much colourless droning, too many bland instrumental bits. But only a couple of tracks are out-and-out failures, and Uncertain Weather is actually really good. Banjo Man should have been on there, too.

I can't help feeling we've derailed this thread somewhat. Perhaps any further discussion should start by resurrecting the Genesis thread?

[mayer]

'End Of The Century', middling?!  Gah.  Granted, it's no 'Ramones' or 'Leave Home', but it's full of gems.  The thing which gets me about the album though, is when people jabber about Phil Spector forcing them into a direction they needn't have gone...which frankly, is bollocks, since most of those songs were written before the wiggy fruitcake was on board.

It is though! I mean, I'm Affected, Rock and Roll High School, Danny Says and D'You Remember Rock n Roll Radio are all fantastic, classic Ramones and a welcome branching out away from much of the first four LPs, but other than a couple of other okay tracks (I Can't Make It On Time, a passable Chinese Rocks), the rest of the LP is so poor that its a clear league away from all of the first four LPs.

I agree that the Spector-factor is at least overstated. Lots of the poorest moments are the Ramones-y-iest songs, like Jackie and Judie and This Ain't Havana, and the best moments (Danny Says) are pure Spector.

For me there are two types of middling album. Those where the thing just has a bunch of average songs, and those with a clutch if classics nestling in amongst a load of dross which drags the whole LP down, and End Of The Century has to fit into that latter camp for me.

[Goldentony]

might aswell add to this, the second electric six album 'senor smoke' was pretty 'middling' to me anyway, it got hammered by most magazines and critics etc. i dunno what it is, its not absoloutely terrible but there's just something missing from it, it just sounds like they cant really be arsed any more. there's a few decent ones on there like bite me and devil nights but there's some horrible shit on there like rock n roll evacuation and boy or girl. 'fire' had catchy memorable hooks all over it, senor smoke just doesnt, too much of it is forgettable. i dont know, i could listen to it if i had nowt else to do.

edit: and the production isnt up to much either.

what a shame, i still love them however.

[trotsky assortment]

Trespass - Like I said above, beautiful insignificance. The Knife really doesn't fit, because it's (a) quite heavy, and (b) remembered. It's probably my least favourite on here, because it feels like an abberation. I love the other five songs to bits, but once Nursery Cryme comes along it's like they never happened. It's more an Ant Phillips solo album than a Genesis album.

I'm clearly in the minority, loving 'Stagnation', then?

Trick of the Tail - Gorgeous all the way through. Looking at it track by track it's got a few duffers (Mad Man Moon, the title track, Robbery, Assault and Battery) but the overall feel of it is lovely. the Volcano-Squonk-Endos movement is particularly effective.

Apart from the clear novelty of 'Robbery...', which I can't say I actively dislike, 'Trick Of The Tail' is really strong for me.  You've singled out 'Mad Man Moon' as a dud - whaa...are you insane?  ;o)

(each to their own, I guess)

[Derek Trucks]

Surely The Second Coming is unmatched for middleness?  There isn't a second on that album that dosen't "almost work but not quite".

[Pepotamo1985]

Metallica - Load

A meandering barrage of bland, montonous hard rock songs. Nothing obscenely horrific in terms of shite, but virtually nothing truly notable either.

Audioslave - Audioslave

Yawn inducingly over-produced rock, with very little variation. Annoyingly anthemic rockers + drab and overwraught balladry = the epitome of genericism.

The Who - By Numbers

Fitting title for an album which is, quite literally, by numbers. The songs sound like little segments of earlier Who tracks bolstered together, and offer little excitement, and nothing new.

Pink Floyd - Meddle

Echoes is a classic, and One Of These Days is stellar. Apart from that, you'll find some annoyingly longwinded filler, inspiring nothing but apathy in a listener.Chaps such as TJ may beg to differ, and more power them.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Surely The Second Coming is unmatched for middleness?  There isn't a second on that album that dosen't "almost work but not quite".

I agree with the first part but not the second. There are plenty of great bits on it but also a tonne of crappy bits as well.

[23 Daves]

Surely The Second Coming is unmatched for middleness?  There isn't a second on that album that dosen't "almost work but not quite".

Some of it doesn't work at all if you ask me.  The attempted close harmonies on "Tightrope", for example, which I find a little painful on the ears.  Then "Straight To The Man", which sounds like the theme tune to the DLT vehicle "Go Getters", only not as good.  I'm surprised the hairy cornflake didn't sue.

It probably is middling on the whole though.  Contrary to claims that were made even at the time it was first released, there's not a single track on there that touches even the worst of the first album, but most of it isn't massively objectionable.  I fucking hate the cliched rock-isms of "Tears", though.  

Interestingly, it's mostly recent fans of the Stone Roses that loathe that album, I find.  I even used to have a "Second Coming" T-shirt, I don't know what I did with it, though.

Oh, and nobody has mentioned a middling album so middling it was featured as being so in a song!  In Pulp's "Bad Cover Version", we were told that the second side of Scott Walker's "Til The Band Comes In" was a disappointment.  And indeed it is.  The rest of the album doesn't quite hit previous heights either, though it does have the most beautiful beginning of any Scott album.  The opening sequence of "Prologue" is just fantastic, you can imagine the start of a film on the back of that - just spine tinglingly brilliant.  Then there's the busy, jittery melodrama of "Things That Keep Us Together" which is great, then.... erm... a lot of stuff that's quite good or only just on the right side of supper-club crooning.  

The whole album was based on a really nice concept - the dramas of a bunch of people on a tight council estate or housing project - which he should have handled really well, but it doesn't quite live up to its promise.  Still, it's got one of the best starts to an album ever.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

The interesting thing about calling something medicore or "middling" is that it causes greater offence that simply calling it "crap", doesn't it?  If something is described as crap or unlistenable, then the fan can at least smugly say that the critic is missing the point, has cloth ears, or is in some way mentally challenged.  Faint praise, on the other hand, always angers people - it deflates whatever alternative danger or quality content they believe the work has.

Yeah - calling something 'middling' suggests you're fully aware of what an artist is trying to do, but you just don't think they do it particularly well.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

So really, you don't need to post in this thread, do you? You're trying to shift the topic to your turf again, yup?

Yeah, and you're trying to keep the debate down. Come here for a tweaking.

[mayer]

Read my three or four posts after that one, baby. I'm slobbering all over the topic and you've still contributed nothing.


New York Dolls - New York Dolls, Eminem - The Slim Shady LP, Echo & The Bunnymen - What Are You Gonna Do With Your Life?, Morrissey - Viva Hate.

NYD and The Slim Shady LP are scuppered by just not having any classic tunes to match the respective ambitions of the artists. Both are meant to be in your face and exciting and stunning, and have sparks of that, but both fall at the hurdle by not having the tunes to pull it through. Both have some good songs (Personality Crisis, Lookin For A Kiss, Jet Boy, Brian Damage, Guilty Conscience, My Name Is), but not the bona fide brilliant songs that a great album needs.

The Bunnymen and Moz albums are another of those two which have some fantastic music (much more on Viva Hate, of course), but so much poor stuff on the second side of both makes it an effort to listen to either despite their very very high peaks (Rust, WAYGDWYL, Baby Rain, all of Side One of Viva Hate bar Bengali in Platforms plus Everyday Is Like Sunday).

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

The Beatles - Rubber Soul

You what? I can't think of a bad track on it. Oh, apart from What Goes On, which is awful.

Let It Be is surely The Beatles' middling album? I can just about convince myself that I Got A Feeling and Dig A Pony are quite enjoyable, but I still feel depressed by its lacklustreness and pointlessness every time I hear it. (Although that in itself speaks volumes - the fact that I keep digging it out.)

I just can't geta away from the idea that a middling album is just a bad album which is bad and boring. If it's just bad (bad as in ugly), you can still enjoy it can't you? And, in pop, isn't being boring the very definition of bad?

[RHX]

Eminem - The Slim Shady LP

I'm still unsure as to why this is considered by some to be his best album, to be honest - if anything, the Marshall Mathers LP (which is rightfully acclaimed, along with The Eminem Show) contained more character and liveliness than the SSLP.

Don't get me wrong, I like all the songs off the album, but I find that the stand-out problem with it is that it feels more like a group of songs that have been smashed together on a CD as opposed to an album. I always have trouble remembering the order that I'm Shady, As The World Turns and Bad Meets Evil go - but I can name the entire tracklist of the other CDs I mentioned off the top of my head.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes... I agree that it's a middling album.

[Ciarán2]

The Beatles' middling albums are, for me, Beatles For Sale and Let It Be.  Middling Beatles albums are a particularly strange phenomenon, they seem to carry more cultural baggage. Let It Be is often rubbished, wasn't it dubbed their "cardboard headstone" by Charles Shaar Murray once? I can see what he's getting at, but if considered on its own merits (if that's possible) it is a fairly lobsided affair. Parts of it are wonderful - my faves are "Two Of Us", "I Got A Feeling", "Let It Be", "Across The Universe" and "The Long and Winding Road". I can't abide John Lennon's "witticisms" throughout the album... ("I dig a pygmy by Charles Hawtrey on the deaf aid, phase one in which Doris gets 'er oats...!") I have an inkling where those were stirred from, I tend to think they're born of Lennon's dissatisfaction with the project as a whole. I've always been slightly underwhelmed by George's contributions on this album too ("I Me Mine" and "For You Blue"). I like the verses of the former, the latter just leaves me shrugging my shoulders really. I approached the album expecting the worst, given its reputation, I can't dislike it though.

I think "Beatles For Sale" is similarly an up and down affair.  I'm surprised Mayer chose to point out the middling nature of "Rubber Soul", which I have to agree with ELW10 on. "What Goes On" aside (poor by Ringo's standards), it's superb. But back to its predecessor. there are some lofty heights of course - "I'm A Loser", "No Reply", "Rock and Roll Music" and "Eight Days A Week". The rest? I find it hard to remember the rest, really. There are a fair few covers, and they don't seem to work as well as in the past. Then there's "I'll Follow The Sun" and "I Don't Want To Spoil The Party" - I love the tiltes but the songs themselves...not really bothered either way.

Just to pick up on a couple of other points in the thread, I don't intend for this to be a forum to knock down sacred cows as such. I recognise there's a good chance of that happenning, and that in itself can raise some interesting points (and I'm finding the Genesis debate particularly intersting on that score - their middling albums for me are "Duke" and "...And Then There Were Three"). I think it may be possible to take a record in isolation and consider whether it has had bugger all affect on you either way. This is where it differs from an over-rated albums thread" - those would represent a dissapointment, whereas that doesn't have to be the case here. This is for records you almost forget ever existed. A musical version of "say the last thing that comes into your head". That doesn't make much sense does it...

[trotsky assortment]

I'd also like to add Kate Bush's 'Lionheart' to the ever growing list.

I know 'The Red Shoes' often takes a bashing, especially when measured up against Kate's other work, but 'Lionheart', to me, sounds like a rush-job - some okay songs and left-overs from 'Kick Inside' released under a year later.

Having spent a huge amount of time listening to Kate's first four albums recently, I've decided, regarding 'Lionheart', nothing on the album upsets me as such, but there's no killer moments.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

I get more and more fond of Lionheart every time I hear it, though - sometimes it seems odder and more adventurous than The Kick Inside.

[Detective John Kimble]

Lionheart was a rush-job.  2 weeks, in fact!  Most of it, indeed, is old songs that were probably considered for the Kick Inside, with 3 brand new songs (Symphony In Blue, Fullhouse and Coffee Homeground - and indeed, the newer ones are the most original/adventurous ones).  

I'd rank it 7th out of 7, but I still find plenty to enjoy...it has 3 real great songs on it, "Oh England, My Lionheart", "Wow" and "Hammer Horror".  Still, "In the Warm Room" is probably my least favourite track from any of the 7 albums.  

It's definitely a bit more adventurous than "The Kick Inside", but "The Kick Inside" has what I'd presume is the pick of all the material she'd written since the mid-'70s, and it's best moments dwarf anything on Lionheart.  The title track is still one of the best songs she's ever written in my view.

[Detective John Kimble]

As pertains to the thread, another middling album:

Dizzee Rascal - 'Showtime'.

The singles were all great.  The album songs...I can barely remember a single note from any of them.  Disappointing downturn from 'Boy In Da Corner', which was brilliant and one of the few Mercury Award winning albums of past years that were actually deserving of the award.  

I didn't mind 'Showtime' when I listened to it, but it never really rose above background music apart from the singles.  I wish he'd have put 'Off to Work' on it.

[Jemble Fred]

Oasis – 'Don't Believe The Truth'.

Not bad per se IMO, just not one iota better than the last two albums. Between the three of 'em, there's one belter of a good album waiting to be made though.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

I'm listening to Rubber Soul right now. Jesus buggering Christ, on what planet is this a middling album? I mean, 'The Word' alone is better than most bands' entire careers.

[Clinton Morgan]

Not on my planet (nor Brian Wilson's) it's my favourite 'Beatles' album out of the ones I've heard.

[sam and janet evening]

Middling albums by the big boys;

Shot of Love - Dylan (one truly great song, two or three reasonable, some 'meh' and one truly awful)

Thinking of Beatles stuff, do the Anthologies count? Again it's that 'I see what they're going for but...' thing. Theres some fine stuff on there but they could be a lot better, and there's also a lot of pointless tedium. Otherwise I'd agree with 'For Sale' but I kind of like 'Let it Be'.

Holland - the Beach Boys, has it's moments (sail on sailor...err I think there's another good one) but not as good as some fans would have you believe.

Lou Reed - Transformer - has around four good-great songs.

[trotsky assortment]

I find 'Transformer' has a greater whole than the sum of its parts.

Since you mentioned Dylan, I'd like to throw 'Infidels' in there too.  Although superior to 'Shot Of Love', it still ambles around with no absolutely classic moments - nothing unbelievablely terrible either.  Meh.