Bands that followed up a 'shiny' album with the opposite?

dinneenp

Hi,
I listened to In Utero for the first time in years and it just jumps out that Nirvana did a kind of 'U' turn after producing a 'polished/shiny/' breakthrough album- Nevermind. It's a gritty, noisy album, almost trying to cleans themselves from their previous work. Maybe a reaction to the mass media attention and becoming a poster boy etc.

Radiohead did something similar with Kid A- turn of direction, almost a fingers up at the newfounded MTV followers/record label. I read that upon hearing this album, upon which the majority of EMI’s big hopes were pinned, Christmas bonuses were cancelled.

I know that above albums aren't exactly 'shiny/radio songs' but you know what I mean....

I'm just wondering what other bands have done the same?

Cheers,
Pa.

Good question.

Blur 'Blur' immediately comes to mind. Sounds like a Coxon-driven reaction to the 'shininess' of Parklife and the Great Escape.

The Manics have done this once or twice as well. They were somewhat uncomfortable with the stadium-rock sound of Gold against the Soul; what came out next was the Holy Bible!

fobster

Neil Young is the one of the classic examples. After the Harvest album and the "Heart of Gold" single he released what's called the "Ditch trilogy". The three albums are Times Fades Away, On the Beach and Tonight's the Night.

Neil Young said of the single a "Heart of Gold":

This song put me in the middle of the road. Travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there."

loveissucide

The Stone Roses did it with Second Coming, music's greatest letdown.
The Strokes did it with Room On Fire,which holds up better than Is This It(It'd be considered a classic album if it had a killer single on a par with Last Night on it)
The Smiths with Meat Is Murder(The 80's production of The Smiths is gone completely)
Prince's Parade is pretty minimalist for the most part,especially compared to how overproduced Around The World In A Day and Purple Rain were.

dinneenp

I suppose you could add The Jesus and Mary Chain- from Psychocandy to Darklands. But I don't think that was a reaction to their previous album/fame.

The Queen is dead (Smiths) is a different angle from previous album but again that's not as a reaction to their previous album.

Pulp- didn't Jarvis say he almost enjoyed wasting a few hunderd thousand pounds and almost tried to make a crap album after their big one...

KnifeWRENCH

Smashing Pumpkins following Mellon Collie with Adore would be a good enough example. That was a pretty big departure. (Incidentally Adore is my favourite Pumpkins album.)

Last Splash was The Breeders "shiniest" and poppiest album. They followed it up 8 years later with the minimalist and "difficult" Title TK.

Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill was quite a straight forward rock album. Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie...erm.....not so much.

Civilian_Target

Pendulum have a good example of this.

Hold Your Colour was a very heavy influence on what was to follow, and was an album jammed with hits. I wouldn't say they were happy, but it was very much a jungle sound.

They followed up with In Silico, which is more like stadium rock, a completely different and much heavier sound.

Butch Cassidy

REM followed Green (big happy summery pop record) with Out of Time (kinda country)
Automatic for the People (kinda electric folk) was followed by Monster (loud punchy and raw)
New Adventures in Hi-Fi (alt rock for a cross country drive along a big landscape) was followed by Up (sort of disjointed)
Reveal and Around the Sun was followed by the "back to basics" guitar driven Accelerate.

MickShamrock

Faith No More followed up "The Real Thing" with "Angel Dust".

delbertgrady

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark followed up the three-million selling, hit single-laden, "seminal" electro-pop album, Architecture and Morality with Dazzle Ships. This audacious release contained more "difficult" songs, and didn't exactly endear itself to 1983's record-buying public with its samples of Eastern European radio broadcasts and one track which is effectively just the speaking clock in several languages. Naturally, twenty-five years on, Dazzle Ships has earned major critical reassessment, having been regarded by fans for years as their masterpiece, but at the time, it sank like a stone.

Bruce Springsteen following the global juggernaut that was Born in the USA, with the considerably more downbeat Tunnel of Love. While there was no great amount of f***ing with the formula, and there were even a few hit singles culled from it, but it was a real about-turn, an introspective album of love, loss and longing that owed much more to his acoustic Nebraska album than to the stadium anthems that cemented his international reputation only a few years earlier.

REM's following Automatic for the People with Monster is another example, but Monster was just a means to an end - a guitar-driven album they could tour with, with Buck cranked up to eleven. The real atom bomb arrived with the subsequent New Adventures in Hi-Fi, a brooding miscellany of weird and wonderful, eclectic songs, some recorded live at soundchecks during the previous tour.

neil_18_

I thought U2's album before No Line The The Horizon was good, but i thought the latter was absolute rubbish

maccored

i'd say the pixies when they followed doolittle with bossanova. though if they had released tromp le monde instead of boosanova then it would have really fit the op's question. (though imo those two albums were way better than doolittle. the general public didnt agree though)

Jobquiries

That Tori Amos chick was a highly acclaimed singer songwriter in the early 90s. Two highly polished albums that brought in droves and droves of fans, reviews and commerical success [they are very good albums]. The first 2 albums were all piano tracks, with strings, white album covers and the lyrics were well written, insightful and polished.

Then she got dumped and literally went insane. Think she came to Ireland actually to record her 3rd album in a church. The album cover was a pig breastfeeding from her own breasts. And the songs were insanely creepy and manic, all about burning men in a volcano, Charlie Brown, making deals with the devil and other stuff. She used harpsichords, real bulls and other weird instruments and in some tracks it sounded like she was having sex. It is bonkers.

Its called Boys for Pele. Its awesome, and has some truly awesome songs. The remix of one of the songs was one of the biggest dance songs of the 90s - Professional Widow. Its about how Courtney Love stole Trent Reznor from her.

Then she went on to electronica, and went back to normal [with some more great albums]. But that 3rd album was bonkers, and when it was released it lost her some fans and alot of critical acclaim (but the weird thing is now its held in very high esteem but at the time people couldn't figure out what the hell happened to her).


Another classic example of a reversal in sound is the Beatles. They went from being pop maestros to becoming highly experimental over the space of a few albums.

DazMarz

Mötley Crüe recruited Bob Rock to give their 1989 drug-free album Dr. Feelgood a slick, polished and brilliant production.

Flash forward to 1994; new singer, new sound, and a grittier album. The self titled album of '94 was Mötley Crüe's ultimate statement of saying goodbye to the 1980's... Pity it was a failure!

HalloweenJack

Somebody mentioned Prince's Parade. He did it earlier too. His first two albums were really smooth productions than he went and released Dirty Mind, which sounds a lot more basic and not-so-fine-tuned.

Funkadelic's debut Funkadelic was really well produced but their next two albums were full of distortion. It's good but doesn't sound as "clean" as the first one.

Os Mutantes did it after their third album (A Divina Comedia) which was really well produced compared to their earlier stuff. Then with their next one, they made a disjointed album switching style and languages on almost every song.

Blisterman

Not really Shiny and clean, but Kanye West followed up Graduation, with 808s and Heartbreak, which has almost no rapping, no samples and nearly every song is cold, bleak and depressing.

Notorious

Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home was his famous album where he introduced the electric guitar. As a follow up from Another Side of Bob Dylan not only did he introduce his electric guitar and a band, but he also took a bigger step away from the 'protest' songs he was associated with, changing in favour of more dreamy and abstract lyrics.

The band New Order went through a complete change from Joy Division after the death of Ian Curtis. With just the removal of one member from the band, the remaining members took a different musical direction over time.

nxbyveromdwjpg

Arctic Monkeys

Dudess

Throwing Muses - The Real Ramona. Very poppy and melodic (for them).

The following year: Red Heaven - less tuneful and more difficult to listen to.

Pighead

Pulp Different Class- This is Hardcore.

From throwaway classic pop nuggets such as Common People, Mis-shapes and Disco 2000 to the rather bleak and dark sounds of Party Hard, This is Hardcore and A Little Soul. The comedown after the Britpop party.

Dudess

Good god how I adore This Is Hardcore.

Pighead

Dudess wrote: »

Good god how I adore This Is Hardcore.

Excellent album alright Dudess although I doubt their record company thought so at the time! Terribly underrated. The Fear, I'm a Man and Dishes (I am not Jesus, though I have the same initials!) are amongst my favourite ever Pulp tunes.

WhitestBoyAlive

nm wrote: »

Arctic Monkeys

Yeah, if we all delete favourite worst nightmare from our memory it's the perfect example

Butch Cassidy

delbertgrady wrote: »

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark followed up the three-million selling, hit single-laden, "seminal" electro-pop album, Architecture and Morality with Dazzle Ships. This audacious release contained more "difficult" songs, and didn't exactly endear itself to 1983's record-buying public with its samples of Eastern European radio broadcasts and one track which is effectively just the speaking clock in several languages. Naturally, twenty-five years on, Dazzle Ships has earned major critical reassessment, having been regarded by fans for years as their masterpiece, but at the time, it sank like a stone.

Bruce Springsteen following the global juggernaut that was Born in the USA, with the considerably more downbeat Tunnel of Love. While there was no great amount of f***ing with the formula, and there were even a few hit singles culled from it, but it was a real about-turn, an introspective album of love, loss and longing that owed much more to his acoustic Nebraska album than to the stadium anthems that cemented his international reputation only a few years earlier.

REM's following Automatic for the People with Monster is another example, but Monster was just a means to an end - a guitar-driven album they could tour with, with Buck cranked up to eleven. The real atom bomb arrived with the subsequent New Adventures in Hi-Fi, a brooding miscellany of weird and wonderful, eclectic songs, some recorded live at soundchecks during the previous tour.

Bruce Springsteen has made a career out of it! Nebraska followed a fairly well produced shiney album but more importantly his career was still booming. There was also Tom Joad that followed Human Touch and that other one (as well as the Greatest Hits package with new tunes). There was that Devils one which followed Rising I think it was.

You hit the nail on the head with REM and New Adventures. I never saw it as eclectic really but I suppose the fact it was written and recorded during the Monster tour then there was a never a tour to accompany the release as the drummer suffered an aneurysm.

Jobquiries wrote: »

That Tori Amos chick was a highly acclaimed singer songwriter in the early 90s. Two highly polished albums that brought in droves and droves of fans, reviews and commerical success [they are very good albums]. The first 2 albums were all piano tracks, with strings, white album covers and the lyrics were well written, insightful and polished.

Then she got dumped and literally went insane. Think she came to Ireland actually to record her 3rd album in a church. The album cover was a pig breastfeeding from her own breasts. And the songs were insanely creepy and manic, all about burning men in a volcano, Charlie Brown, making deals with the devil and other stuff. She used harpsichords, real bulls and other weird instruments and in some tracks it sounded like she was having sex. It is bonkers.

Its called Boys for Pele. Its awesome, and has some truly awesome songs. The remix of one of the songs was one of the biggest dance songs of the 90s - Professional Widow. Its about how Courtney Love stole Trent Reznor from her.

Then she went on to electronica, and went back to normal [with some more great albums]. But that 3rd album was bonkers, and when it was released it lost her some fans and alot of critical acclaim (but the weird thing is now its held in very high esteem but at the time people couldn't figure out what the hell happened to her).


Another classic example of a reversal in sound is the Beatles. They went from being pop maestros to becoming highly experimental over the space of a few albums.

I just had to do a quick wiki to check this info out! It sounds damn sure interesting. A church in Delgany?! hah...



Ain't no pug suckin on breast there though.

jill_valentine

Butch Cassidy wrote: »

Ain't no pug suckin on breast there though.

NSFW, obviously:

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~garden/music/tori/pig.jpg

Placid_Casual

Nick Drake followed up the fairly lush Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter with the extremely stripped down Pink Moon. All three flopped on release.

Ryan Adams followed up his most successful album, Gold, with an album consistening entirely of demos, Demolition. And when his record company rejected his next album, Love Is Hell, he knocked out a pretty crap cock-rock album, Rock n Roll, to piss them off.

Suede following their debut album up with the proggy Dog Man Star.

I always thought The Clash following London Calling up with Sandinista was a fairly bold move but in some ways it was a natural progression.

eviltimeban

The Lemonheads did "Come On Feel The Lemonheads" which had "Into Your Arms" and all sorts of shiny pop songs on it, and then followed it with "Car Button Cloth" which wasn't shiny at all. Quite unsettling in places (eg "Losing Your Mind").

The Orb followed their hit album "UFOrb" with "Pomme Fritz" which was pretty different and a really weird album. If you'd class "UFOrb" as "shiny" that is.

Of course, the Beatles followed Sgt Pepper with the white album (not counting the Magical Myster Tour EP), and that was a pretty un-shiny album.

Nirvana actually went forward, then back, then forward again with Bleach/Nevermind/In Utero.

Pearl Jam too, I wouldn't necessarily call "Vs" shiny, but it was a solid rock album, and "Vitalogy" had a few really weird moments ("Bugs") and wasn't as polished as Vs. You could actually say the same thing about "Vs" following "Ten" - Vs being the better album IMHO.

Air jumped from the coffee table chill out of "Moon Safari" to a little more weirder territory with "10000 KHz Legend".

Its not exactly the right example, but Paul McCartney followed his extremely polished work on "Abbey Road" with the sketchy, demo sounding "McCartney" album, which surprised most people on its release.

Stina Nordenstam followed a beautiful acoustic album called "And She Closed her Eyes" with one called "Dynamite", which was very industrial and noisy.

I'm sure there's lots more examples.

Pighead

Placid_Casual wrote: »

Suede following their debut album up with the proggy Dog Man Star.

Wouldn't necessarily call Suede a "shiny" album. Yeah a couple of the singles were pretty bright and bouncy but on the whole it was a pretty gloomy affair (Pantomine Horse, Breakdown, The Next Life, She's not Dead and Sleeping Pills being particularly bleak.

delbertgrady

eviltimeban wrote: »

It's not exactly the right example, but Paul McCartney followed his extremely polished work on "Abbey Road" with the sketchy, demo sounding "McCartney" album, which surprised most people on its release.

McCartney is my favourite Macca solo album, and serious contender for my favourite Beatles solo release. I think it works well because they sound like demos. It has a nice, homegrown quality to it.

grumpytrousers

Pighead wrote: »

Wouldn't necessarily call Suede a "shiny" album. Yeah a couple of the singles were pretty bright and bouncy but on the whole it was a pretty gloomy affair (Pantomine Horse, Breakdown, The Next Life, She's not Dead and Sleeping Pills being particularly bleak.

However, the jump from the gloomy Dog Man Star to the ultra shiny Coming Up was quite the change, no?

Pighead

grumpytrousers wrote: »

However, the jump from the gloomy Dog Man Star to the ultra shiny Coming Up was quite the change, no?

Night and day alright grumpy. Pretty amazing that both those albums were written within a couple of years of each other. Wonder would the third album have been as shiny had Butler stayed around.