Camel's Back Albums

I think this all depends how strong the camel was in the first place. Oranges & Lemons by XTC possibly would have broken any other camel/bands back....

I often find follow up singles to very good singles to be sufficient to paraplegias an artist. Close Your Eyes, You Look Like A Parrot might scertainly be enough for me and Belle & Seb. Smiley Smile?

Tricky one - because it seems to imply that you already dislike something, but then this one record makes you dislike them even more. I find it hard to envisage this as a qualitative, rather than merely quantitative change.

But I think I have got one example. Robbie Williams. For a while back there I thought he might be an OK pop presence - not great, not despicable, lightweight but a tad more intelligent than some of his peers. Then he pushed me over the edge. I'm not sure if it was 'Angels' and the media's hideous overrating of its banalities; or the cynicism of 'Millennium' - the way he tacked on the title-word to a feeble typical lyric and an irritating sample. Somewhere back then, he lost all my remaining respect - and you may well ask why I had any anyway - and became pretty loathsome.

Well, to clarify - it's more like, you like an artist, and then they start putting out records which you dont like so much, and you think OK, I'll go along with this, because it's them, and then they put out a record where you suddenly think hold on, this is awful.

OR: a band which you like puts out a record which suddenly reveals to you the colossal flaws which you'd previously been unaware or semi- aware of. Such a record for me was "Automatic For The People", which cast a malign spell over REM's back catalogue.

Funny you mention REM, my straw for them was Monster. I'd had issues with the previous couple of records, but after that, I could never be interested again. (I like Automatic, though.)

I'd nominate Bowie more than a few times. Then again, after a decade of near total and utter brilliance from 1970 to 1980, *anything* else would look feeble. ;-)

The last Suede album, which was simply hideous. I think it actually got album of the year in The Melody Maker, how I have no idea, since it was the biggest pile of bilge released in the entire 12 months. The final nail in the coffin of a favourite of my teenage years. Rather sad, in a way.

A few random examples:

"Buzzle Bee" (The High Llamas) "The First of the Microbe Hunters" (Stereolab) Cappadonna's "The Pillage" (the Wu-Tang thunderslush, for a while anyway) "Like Water For Chocolate" (Common, and indeed his entire genre)

Definitely "Buzzle Bee" and "Dots and Loops"...those are 2 I can think of where a definite loss of quality control has set in, and it's hard to either of them doing anything as enjoyable as the earlier albums.

But then there are other bands like Sonic Youth who had a great run of albums in the 80's and early 90's and now release crap for the most part, but have the occaisonal great song. A separate category for cases like that, maybe?

For me Teenage Fanclub's "13" was terrible, I really went off them after that. The same with that Welsh band who had an album called the Holy Bible, which was really boring. Am I the only person in the world who thinks that "Gold Against the Soul" was really great? So, yeah, after these two albums I gave up on these bands.

"The Holy Bible" resonated no end with me when I was 15, which shows how hopelessly fucked up I was (sad cliche, I know, but true in my case). It's still better overall than "Gold Against The Soul", much of which is quasi-AOR dross, though "La Tristesse Durera" and "Life Becoming A Landslide" still stand out, I think. Not that I've been inclined to play it at any time in the last four years.

I think the answer for me, actually, may be Blur's later work: 'Beetlebum', 'Song 2', the Blur album; the execrable 'Tender' and the 13 album, which I was too far gone from this band to obtain in any form. (And remember, kids, the Beatles have special powers; you do not. etc etc.)

Funny that two albums called 13 should make this category. That was another thing I hated about 13, actually - the stupid way they reused a recentish indieish LP's name.