a classic case of the music critic ecosystem finding the previous album too late, then overreacting to the next record

alpine static otm in MJ Lenderman

this is a classic case of the greater music critic ecosystem finding the previous cool/underground album too late to review it when it came out, then overreacting to the next record - which in this case is good! don't get me wrong, i like this one. but Boat Songs is better (imo).

I feel like this happens a lot

what are other classic cases?

surely High Violet by The National and Bon Iver s/t

more recent example: Arooj Aftab (Vulture Prince >>> Night Reign - again no shade, this is central, Night Reign is good, but it's no Vulture Prince)

l'rain

The 1975 with I like it when you sleep > Brief Inquiry

each successive Replacements album after Let It Be seemed to get this reaction as their reputation accumulated and their quality drifted downwards.

There was a lot of this in the 80s as bands jumped from indie labels to majors. The acclaim for Warehouse: Songs and Stories felt like critics catching up on HD's entire career right at the end.

This is Xgau's shtick.

All Boris previous albums > Pink.

Queens of the Stone Age - S/t > Rated R

when i read the early '90s Rolling Stone album guide this was also their schtick. they loved the dreaded "ambitious" or "sprawling" or "mature" albums.

xxp

Isis - Oceanic > Panopticon

not sure I'm seeing this with Night Reign tbh -- Vulture Prince won a grammy lol. I agree that VP > NR though

Initial reviews of Be Here Now were, in John Harris's words, unanimous with "truly amazing praise". According to Harris, "To find an album that had attracted gushing notices in such profusion, one had to go back thirty years, to the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."[55]

...

Reviews in the British music press for (What's the Story) Morning Glory? had been generally negative. When it went on to become, in the words of Select editor Alexis Petridis, "this huge kind of zeitgeist-defining record", the music press was "baffled".[57] Petridis believed the initial glowing reviews of Be Here Now were a concession to public opinion.[57]

The acclaim for Warehouse: Songs and Stories felt like critics catching up on HD's entire career right at the end.

― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes), Friday, 27 September 2024 18:23 (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Absolutely

I still say the reaction to Daydream Nation was given because the press missed out on Sister. But that may be a controversial POV

xp rob fair point!

still feel like the reception of NR is overcompensating (less than for the Love in Exile collab though)

Phoebe Bridgers, Stranger in the Alps > Punisher

definitely!

the-dream love vs money (ignored) vs love king (overrated)

re:

Initial reviews of Be Here Now were, in John Harris's words, unanimous with "truly amazing praise". According to Harris, "To find an album that had attracted gushing notices in such profusion, one had to go back thirty years, to the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."[55]

can't tell if it's implied in this otm quote, but indeed Sgt. Pepper's is a classic example!

I don't think Revolver was overlooked.

Ryan Adams: Whiskeytown stuff/Heartbreaker > Gold

Jazmine Sullivan's Love Me Back > the two far more enthusiastically reviewed projects after that (which are still very good)

Paramore's self-titled > the last two albums

Kacey Musgraves' Same Trailer Different Park > Golden Hour

broadly true with Taylor Swift's early stuff vs. later stuff

I'd say Titanic Rising, but that one is also amazing. But yeah

Leonard Cohen, no-one saw Various Positions for the masterpiece it was and went bananas (DYSWIDT?) for the markedly inferior I'm Your Man.

L'Rain absolutely too yeah, with the bonus round of her actually-great 3rd album getting a muted reaction again

"One Day It'll All Make Sense" reviews were penance for missing "Resurrection"

The thing is--these usually become apparent over time--like everyone knows Let It Be is better than Don't Tell a Soul now, etc. However I don't think the acclaim for "I'm Your Man" had anything to do with critics realizing they missed ""Various Positions." People are still missing that one for the most part.

speakerboxxx/the love below

ha I was going to say Stankonia.

Various Positions is a warm-up for IYM; he's bidding farewell to an old manner while not quite sure how he wants the new one to sound.

xp yeah but speakerboxxx/the love below won the grammy and came 1st in pazz & jop despite being markedly inferior to both stankonia and aquemini

I have felt this way about every Bill Callahan record since Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle. It seemed like the NPR crowd caught on just when he was settling into a comfortable rut

i've felt like this about all the Flaming Lips albums after a certain point

Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev

I do like Deserters Songs but its not as great as the previous ones.
And Flaming Lips were better before The Soft Bulletin (and I liked that)

xxxxpost But Stankonia topped Pazz & Jop so it was not ignored by the critical ecosystem

yeah but stankonia was good!

it's ok

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is a prime example of an act being so critically beloved that a weak work is given the extreme benefit of the doubt.

Tigermilk warranted all the hype that IYFS & TBWTAS received (due to label deals & better distribution).

i remember loving ATLiens in 1996 but everyone went nuts for Aquemini. maybe they are just both good. but i do remember thinking hey whatabout ATLiens that album was awesome...oh whatevernevermind.

Atomizer > Songs About Fucking

I remember when The Source took back its 5 Mic review of Aquemini, saying it didn't deserve the top score.

I’m not a music critic but I would guess this is sort of related to “the first one you heard is the best”

cut copy (1st album >>> 2nd album)

“Bright Like Neon Love received widespread acclaim from critics.”

lol ok nevermind

I don't think that's a terrible example. "Widespread acclaim from critics" is boilerplate Wikipedia language. Bright Like Neon Love got generally good reviews from the publications that bothered to review it, but Metacritic shows only 9 reviews compared to 17 for In Ghost Colours. Pitchfork didn't even review BLNL, for instance.

Which reminds me (I guess because Australia):

Tame Impala, Innerspeaker > Lonerism

moses sumney - grae, praised to death over the superior prior record, aromanticism

No one will agree, and one's an EP and the other a double, but I think Zen Arcade is wildly overrated (with a handful of great songs) because of critics late on Metal Circus. This happens all the time with filmmakers.

Cut Copy was the instant example of this I thought of.

Ten Love Songs > Music For People In Trouble
Black Cherry > Supernature

Floating Points + Pharaoh Sanders, but in this case his whole career suddenly felt slept on.

100 gecs. First album is a classic, second album is everything the haters said the first album was

I prefer in ghost colors to cut copy debut 🤷🏻‍♂️

I don’t think it’s a good example bc I think the aesthetic shifted and some fans didn’t like the new direction as much and some preferred it. Different think imho

that's cool, i just thought the songs weren't as good and that there were too many of them.

latepassapedia: records that were light years better the ones indie dudes eventually endorsed as classics

Future Nostalgia > Radical Optimism
Parachutes > Rush of Blood
everything before > Little Creatures

Was there a big critical lovefest for Radical Optimism?

Certainly more than was warranted.

I still hear "Illusion" and "Houdini" on the local pop radio station.

lol at whiney’s car crash of a thread from 13 years ago. I’m not sure what it says that the same conversation is so much politer now.

And yeah Clipse was the immediate example that occurred to me. OutKast and The-Dream and Jay-Z also good suggestions (unbelievably, some critics I know here in Australia only jumped on with The Black Album? That’s like needing a late pass to the Late Pass Festival).

I was trying to think of a good dance music example but the usually the issue there is that the artist has already lost it (whatever it was) by the time they actually release an album, and I’m reluctant to blame critics for not paying too much attention before that. I’m struggling to think of a dance artist whose first album was unjustly ignored and second album over-praised.

xpost So this would be positing that critics did not pay attention to Future Nostalgia and made up for that by over-praising the famous flop Radical Optimism? Okay.

A lot of publications not called The Source missed out on how great Illmatic was upon its release. I don't know if that led to critics over-praising It Was Written, but Illmatic had definitely risen in stature by the time the follow-up came out.

Would Chance the Rapper's Coloring Book count? Like I do think praise for it was an overreaction, but I also don't think Acid Rap was necessarily ignored upon release either.

I’m struggling to think of a dance artist whose first album was unjustly ignored and second album over-praised.

― Tim F, Monday, September 30, 2024 12:07 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

fred again, maybe (lol)

seriously tho, the ep he did with headie one and the first actual life tape were great. then he got huge and much worse

I’m struggling to think of a dance artist whose first album was unjustly ignored and second album over-praised.

would not call Untrue overpraised - I think it was praised just the right amount - but Burial kinda fits here in that everyone seemed to jump on the bandwagon after he'd already released like 80% of his best material

Trying to think of these, but I'm mostly coming up with the opposite : artists who released their best work after the cognoscenti had moved on.

Sgt. Pepper's is a classic example!

― corrs unplugged, Friday, September 27, 2024 6:45 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think Revolver was overlooked.

― There’s a Monster in my Vance (President Keyes), Friday, September 27, 2024 6:48 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Although arguably "the [rock/pop] music critic ecosystem" barely existed in 1966, and I've never read any contemporary mainstream press holding up Revolver as a bold step forward. Maybe Wilfred Mellers wrote something to that effect.

Although arguably "the [rock/pop] music critic ecosystem" barely existed in 1966, and I've never read any contemporary mainstream press holding up Revolver as a bold step forward. Maybe Wilfred Mellers wrote something to that effect.
― Halfway there but for you, Monday, September 30, 2024 4:19 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Wikipedia has a "Contemporary reviews" section under Critical Reception. Here's the first paragraph:

In Britain, the reception to Revolver was highly favourable.[366] Having found Rubber Soul "almost monotonous" at times, Melody Maker lauded the new release,[367] saying it was a work that would "change the direction of pop music".[366] The reviewer highlighted its "electronic effects", McCartney's "penchant for the classics" and Harrison's "stunning use of the sitar" as diverse elements that distinguished the LP as a group effort, such that the four band members' "individual personalities are now showing through loud and clear".[368] The writer concluded: "this is a brilliant album which underlines once and for all that the Beatles have definitely broken the bounds of what we used to call pop."[369] Peter Clayton, a jazz critic for Gramophone magazine, described it as "an astonishing collection" that defied easy categorisation since much of the LP had no precedent in the context of pop music. Clayton concluded: "if there's anything wrong with the record at all it is that such a diet of newness might give the ordinary pop-picker indigestion."[370][371]

OK, now read the same paragraph in the Sgt. Pepper's article and tell me the acclaim hasn't increased by an order of magnitude.

Finding Beatles album in the U.S. before they came out on CD was hard iirc, so Revolver didn't get its due until several years had passed and younger critics in the early '90s got to hear it for the first time in its unexpurgated form.

The funny thing is that the American edition of Revolver was actually more radical sounding because it was shorn of two of the more norm-y style tracks ("Dr. Robert" & "And Your Bird Can Sing") which had already appeared (along with "I'm Only Sleeping") on Yesterday and Today.

I might have misunderstood the premise of the thread but I'm just going to remind myself, if no-one else, what was said about Revolver at the time:

a work that would change the direction of pop music

the Beatles have definitely broken the bounds of what we used to call pop

the LP has no precedent in the context of pop music

Now if you'd asked me which Beatles' album those comments were made about I would definitely have said Sgt. Pepper. So, as I say unless I've misunderstood the thread, I don't know what Revolver and Sgt. Pepper are doing in this thread.

Every thread demands Beatle content

It most certainly does not.

Lol

I don't think that's a terrible example. "Widespread acclaim from critics" is boilerplate Wikipedia language. Bright Like Neon Love got generally good reviews from the publications that bothered to review it, but Metacritic shows only 9 reviews compared to 17 for In Ghost Colours. Pitchfork didn't even review BLNL, for instance.

― jaymc, Friday, 27 September 2024

As an Antipodean, my memory is the debut (and the EPs!) did well (critically/commercially) in Aus/NZ whereas the second one was the one that broke through to UK/US audiences.

Burial actually would be a good example other than that I think he got better after the album. Pitchfork probably regret my timely-but-tepid review of the debut but the last time I listened to it I decided I had not in fact been underrating it.

Pantha Du Prince is the dance music example. This Bliss >>>> everything since

nilüfer yanya’s “my method actor”

I sort of get the desire to include Revolver, in that the follow-up was instantly canonized as earth-shaking masterpiece among critical and fans alike, while Revolver (which was already doing so many of the same exciting things) was not. Especially in the US it's never had anything close to the pop-culture footprint of SPLHCB, or Rubber Soul for that matter. (See also: the Beatles Anthology doc, which devotes more time to the band's trips to Tokyo and the Philippines in this period.)

But it wasn't exactly ignored by critics, as the quotes prove. It's just that for the next one the praise went up to the megaton range. I'd say it doesn't fit.

Yes, I think it's very US-centric to think that Revolver was somehow under appreciated but then was Pepper the first Beatles album released in the US with its tracklisting intact?

Yes.

xpost - Well it doesn't really MATTER, technically. But I think ILX is one place where many people are professional, part-time or hobbyist critics/bloggers etc. And some times its interesting to talk about how sausages get made, y'know?

― url sweatshirt (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, January 30, 2011 3:15 PM (thirteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

how sausage parties get made

― sarahel, Sunday, January 30, 2011 3:16 PM (thirteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

yves tumor heaven to a tortured mind

There's a couple examples on the Pitchfork list today. Both Chief Keef and Bladee was made BNM this year, but it's 4NEM and Crest that made the list.

i feel like 4nem is the opposite, a mid-tier album in his discography released after a swelling of good will for the artist that was overly praised because it was the first one he dropped in a while with focus, pr push, a lead single, etc.

Burial got better when he realized his stuff worked better in single/EP format instead of albums

alabaster deplume, gold

^^ good one!

As per Then Play Long's review of 2 Unlimited's Real Things, it was a relative critical hit compared to No Limits

Also ha 10,000 gecs is the first time I've found gecs any good

attention before that. I’m struggling to think of a dance artist whose first album was unjustly ignored and second album over-praised.

― Tim F, Monday, 30 September 2024 18:07 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Not overpraised as such, but Death in Vegas' Contino Sessions was one of the big UK critical favourites of 99 and that wasn't true of Dead Elvis in 97, when really they're similar in quality

Speaking of 99 albums that may have been overpraised, what about...
Shack - Waterpistol > H.M.S. Fable

my problem with Burial in 2024 is that it's all gotten increasingly cheesier and sentimental to the point it's a bit laughable, the praise makes less sense to me with each release

The latest Burial release is my favourite thing he'd done in years, while probably one of the least distinctive. Was it inevitable he'd eventually make a pretty straight hardcore record at some point? Having run out of ways to do anything around that but not actually that? Like it was probably on the cards since he first heard Sweet Harmony as a kid.

Burial will always remain beyond reproach for me based on all of his early work and a fair bit of the later work. It seems I'm the one of few people who rates Antidawn very highly, but nothing after that has quite stuck for me, even when my initial impressions have been positive. Phoneglow, Streetlands and Dreamfear are great examples: I really liked all of them, but every time I felt myself hovering over the button to add them to my cart, I thought about the price + shipping, and ultimately couldn't bring myself to actually buy them. That would have been unthinkable behavior for me for everything up to Chemz / Dolphinz.

Sorry for the Burial derail, I don't need much encouragement. He's still one of my favorite artists ever

I have to think a lot of the raves for mid-00s UGK and Three 6 Mafia projects was making up for critics ignoring their 90s output.

also see Fishscale

The acclaim for Fishscale -- an album I'll still stan for -- reminded me that I'd missed the two albums after Supreme Clientele, so I'm grateful.

Were Stone Temple Pilots an example of this? I've never heard those first two LPs.

Wikipedia suggests early reviews for Appetite for Destruction were nothing much (despite its belated P&J appearance), which wasn't the case with the Use Your Illusions.

Did Tiny Music got critical acclaim? If so, I think it might be more a case of the band changing up their sound to something that happened to be more critic-friendly (from post-grunge to neo-glam).

(but perhaps a bit of "this shift actually started on the last album, but we sorta didn't notice that because we judged THAT one based on the FIRST album)

I was thinking Purple getting more critical love/attention on release than Core

Speaking of 99 albums that may have been overpraised, what about...
Shack - Waterpistol > H.M.S. Fable

It was impossible to hear Waterpistol at the time

Wouldn't that make it a perfect example of 'finding it too late'?

Through no fault of their own ofc

till feel like the reception of NR is overcompensating (less than for the Love in Exile collab though)

It earns a LOT of praise, dunno how much would be too much.

Premise of this thread is just another, "How dare noobs like something more than I did."

The thing is--these usually become apparent over time--like everyone knows Let It Be is better than Don't Tell a Soul now, etc.

in hindsight, the goodwill generated by dow's first post caused me to overreact to his second, third, and fourth posts

Uh-oh, sorry, the (misread?) Love In Exile comment just hit me rong. But I still think Keyes is right about how gradual the re-evaluation can be, and I for one still gradually go back and forth on some vintage works even now (Sgt. Pepper's for inst).

no fear, was making a dumb joke

the weeknd 'dawn FM' (which made the pitchfork half-decade top 50) is a random but good one -- total criticbait in that it's a concept album made in conjunction w/ an underground auteur (0PN) who the critical community had been championing as cutting edge for years prior

in reality, it offers far fewer great songs than his previous three albums, especially the two immediately before it, all of which were largely ignored or reviled by critics. to boot, the album was also probably his first flop, or at least the likely signal of the end of his imperial phase. so it's an even weirder and more specific case of the critical community rallying behind an A list pop album at the exact time that the pop star's fans had the opposite reaction. in this case i don't really think there's a good reason for it, they just fell for the hooked worm. pitchfork put 'after hours' into that box of albums that gets a 7.9 but no whiff of institutional support -- someone i follow on twitter once called this "the coward's BNM" -- and would've been a far better album to champion

The 1975 with I like it when you sleep > Brief Inquiry

― Murgatroid, Friday, September 27, 2024 1:50 PM (four days ago)

the 6.5 for 'i like it when you sleep' era (ILM maybe the only place where music critics were passionately arguing against the years long consensus that the 1975 were annoying and frivolous) slowly morphing into the "love it if we made it" as defining trump presidency anthem + 8.5 BNM for 'brief inquiry' era is definitely a prime example of watching this phenomenon happen in real time

i also just need to register my disagreement w/ MJ lenderman being the example used in the OP. aside from the fact that lenderman was covered pretty heavily for a new solo indie rock guy in the 2020s, there's a pretty big difference in production quality and even songwriting concision on the new album to the point that i think people -- like me -- who prefer slicker production and pop oriented songwriting are going to respond differently to the decidedly more lo-fi and ramshackle album that preceded it. albums where the artist attempts to broaden their fanbase in a noticeable way & then succeeds make for more slippery inclusions into this canon

no fear, was making a dumb joke

― hott ogo (voodoo chili)

as the provider of the example in the OP, i'll take this lull as an opportunity to post my follow-up comment in the Lenderman thread:

xxpost, i don't mean that as a shot at the greater music critic ecosystem or the critics themselves, btw. many people caught onto Boat Songs not long after it was released, it's just that so many people work for places that won't run a review 3 months after release date. people got to do year-end stories and blurbs for Top Whatever lists, but for many folks, this is really the first chance they've gotten to praise Jake and his music, so it's coming in hot.

also wanna say J0rdan's last post is a fair point and good perspective for me to hear.

Pitchfork placed "God Save the Animals" at #23 of the best albums since 2020 so maybe Alex G fits this premise.

Jazmine Sullivan's Love Me Back > the two far more enthusiastically reviewed projects after that (which are still very good)

― some dude

seconded!!

I don’t know that reality show is a good example of that unless you mean specifically just my one enthusiastic review of it in pitchfork, which felt very lonely at the time and was knocked down from my suggested BNM

the one after it, definitely

Grouper comes to mind, not that I find any of her stuff bad.

Kurt Vile also

Oh my fucking god. MLIR -> Parklife. Maybe the all-time winner of this

yeah that's true, not sure which is the better LP though

Emperor is a classic case: “In The Nightside Eclipse” was largely ignored by the metal press when it came out in 1994 because few had Norway on the radar, but it became a huge classic in the scene.

So when the band got back together three years later after the whole arson/murder media circus and did “Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk”(which basically continued the sound of the ITNE), the press praised it to high heaven even though it isn’t half as good as the debut.

I saw Emperor and my mind went to Emperor Tomato Ketchup. Which is actually the only Stereolab album I ever listen to anymore, but I know some feel strongly that it (and its successors) mark a drop-off from the more brusque 1992-94 stuff though it and D&L are their most crossover/canon-friendly records.

Wasn't Run-D.M.C.'s King of Rock (which I really like) praised to high heavens by those who ignored the debut? Or is that a bit of a myth.

Again, I do actually prefer the second album here, but what about Mustt Mustt > Night Song

Mars Audiac Quintet is an amazing recent discovery and I honestly can't square that with my memory of what came next, but maybe I need to give it all another go before I consign myself to the Mercury Rev 'early noisy stuff good, rest dreck' bin for Stereolab too

I remember the Run-DMC debut getting reviewed in Rolling Stone and thinking "that sounds interesting, but I can't imagine what it sounds like" and so I was totally primed when the video for "King of Rock" came out -- so I think it was more an issue of the second record getting mainstream promotion, the critical momentum already in place.