Rewrite the book on 'disastrous' follow up albums

It's beautifully produced but severely lacking the melodic quality that 'Lexicon of Love' had.

'Sandinista' - excellent. Respect to the Clash for doing what they wanted to do. The logical next move according to the rock textbook would have been to go for a big production stadium filler tailored for the American market.

'The Second Coming'- unfairly slagged off across the board. In the main it's excellent.

'Rhythm and Stealth'. Not as good as 'Leftism', but no dud.

Echo and The Bunnymen's self-titled follow up to Ocean Rain. I've always liked this album - sure, it's not the dark epic which most fans would've wanted, but there are some excellent songs ('Bombers Bay', 'Over You'). The production's a bit flat, but on the whole it's fine.

Also from Liverpool - 'Wilder', Teardrop Explodes follow-up to the magnificent 'Kilimanjaro' was seen as a disaster at the time, and for years after. Nearly 20 years later, there's not much between them.

Finally, a lot of people seem to think that 'A Different Kind of Tension' is a disappointment after 'Another Music...' and 'Love Bites'. Wrong. It's easily the best Buzzcocks album.

BTW That ABC "Beauty Stab" album was a wierd one. During the opening track "That Was Then, But This Is Now" (Which was actually the "flagship" single for the album in the UK!) one can actually hear the sound shifting from the "old" ABC in the initial verse-chorus- verse-chorus to the "new" ABC with an inconclusive bridge bookended by explosions of screaming guitars, cutting off abruptly into the next track, which begins with a few parps of avante-garde guitar before kicking in in a rather bloshhy rock guitar vein, which lasts pretty much throughout the album. (Barring the classically orchestrated ending tracks on each side, and the excellent "SOS" single.) Fry and co seem to gone all out to really piss off "Lexcon of Love" fans, but it's still a pretty decent album, and I was most amused to find that it wasd the title track that was used as the theme music to Jonathan King's abortive 80s pop programme "No Limits"! ;)

Old Fart!!!!

2. Classic example: the Sundays' Blind LP. Which is gorgeous and never mentioned by anyone, except offhand as the dour disappointment it wasn't.

3. Don't forget U2's RATTLE&HUM.

The idea of a 'follow-up' has always seemed curious to me, by the way - cos everything after the first thing you do is presumably a follow-up in some sense. So does a true follow-up need to be organically linked to what preceded it?

I did, however, once find _Second Coming_ quite sad and defiant and depressed in its content and mood, which suited what I was looking for at the time (the bit about "Grande Bretagne owes her debts" and the slow, lazy intonation *was* me at the time, for better or worse). It's just that I never liked the first Roses album at all, which is why I felt my erstwhile fondness for their much-maligned *second* effort merited confession in this thread.

He was very disappointed in how well it sold

The Menace is fine. Not as great as Elastica, but still fine.

Room on fire is ditto.

Second Coming ditto

Liverpool szzzzzzz welcome to the pleasuredome szzzzzz.