The best career closer (final track on final album) ever?

Suggested already: Pulp - Sunrise, Talk Talk - Runeii

XTC - The Wheel And The Maypole is bloody good iirc

"The Future is Now" - the Boo Radleys

Thin White Rope - The Clown Song (both on their last studio album and the live album after that - it's just the most perfect comedown after the storm)

thread needs Southall's presence, especially with regard The Beta Band - Pure For, a song I know he has a thing for

Joy Division - "Decades"

Runeii's great and beautiful and stuff, but it's not in the running here I don't think; it's not a highlight for the band or the album it's on, arguably.

Pure For is a contender, that's for sure.

Juno "Killing It In a Quiet Way"
Fugazi "The Argument"

Wrecking Ball by Gillian Welch, if she's finished with recording.

The Argument is a fucking awesome shout.

Blur "Battery In Your Leg"
Sleater-Kinney "Let's Call It Love / Night Light" (cheating, slightly)

ABBA "Like an Angel Passing Through My Room"

Minor Thread - "Salad Days"

The Triffids - Fairytale Love

Voodoo Chile (Slight Return). Kind of.

Uncle Tupelo - "Steal the Crumbs"

Nocturn / Aerial is an awesome 1-2 killer closer punch, assuming Kate Bush sinks back into an eternity of doing the dishes naked.

I really think Runeii makes peace with *the end*, whatever that is, better than almost any other song I can name; it's an almost perfectly just-so piece of music, and it says everything it has to say, no more.

Grandaddy's This Is How It Always Starts would be an absolutely prime, shining, solid-gold contender if they hadn't put a silly novelty cover after it for no reason except pointless homage. Fortunately, I have deleted this song from my iTunes copy (it's more or less the only album I've actually had to tamper with), so it ends on that beautiful note of cyclical desolation.

Not heard some of these...will have to look out.

Battery In Your Leg? Disagree. It crossed my mind but was quickly, quickly booted out. It's just not quite good enough, and besides, they're not necessarily over. Sleater-Kinney shout would be an *excellent* one if they were the same track, aye

Seconding Euler's post.

Also, it depends on whether or not you consider From a Basement on the Hill his "final album" -- some might say it's Figure 8 and this was unfinished, but because I do:

Elliott Smith - "A Distorted Reality is Now a Necessity to be Free"

Catch My Drift by AR Kane.

Soon by MBV?!

Runeii does have that sense of finality, I guess.

ABBA's "Like An Angel Passing Through My Room" is to me the perfect career closer, nostalgic, elegiac, morbid, final . . .

Long awaited darkness falls
Casting shadows on the walls
In the twilight hour I am alone
Sitting near the fireplace, dying embers warm my face
In this peaceful solitude
All the outside world subdued
Everything comes back to me again
In the gloom
Like an angel passing through my room

Half awake and half in dreams
Seeing long forgotten scenes
So the present runs into the past
Now and then become entwined, playing games within my mind
Like the embers as they die
Love was one prolonged good-bye
And it all comes back to me tonight
In the gloom
Like an angel passing through my room

I close my eyes
And my twilight images go by
All too soon
Like an angel passing through my room

All Apologies! Where Did You Sleep Last Night!

a second for : Nirvana - All Apologies
Oh! Sweet Nuthin' - Velvet Underground (Squeeze doesn't count)

How many people will rep for Prince of Mars if I mention it? Ned?

Crime & the City Solution - The Last Dictator (part 1-4)

Unintended ones that have a stroke of irony in their accidental closingness rule this thread.

Yawning At Comets.

Into The Storm.

oh wait I just remembered the all-time no-exceptions total and utter winner of this conjecture

it is

mark this well:

GY!BE - Motherfucker = Redeemer Pt. 2

that fucking piece of music says everything GY!BE wanted to ever say inside 10 minutes of sonic terror, storm, bliss, and resolution

xxp came to post All Apologies

Big Black - Bombastic Intro

(lol)

yeah, I'm not a huge fan otherwise but All Apologies is a pretty tremendous career ender.

In My Hour of Darkness - Gram Parsons

Gospel Plow.

I suspect it's not unintended but Camper Van Beethoven's "Come On Darkness" hits the morbid spot.

although fuck they had a reunion (which shouldn't count I don't think but oh well)

Metallica - "Dyers Eve"

One thing I am learning from my trawl through my music collection,

is that bands have this remarkably tenacious ability not to break up

If only Sleazy would have stopped fiddling with their unfinished albums after the first official last one, then Coil - Going Up (on Ape Of Naples) would have been perfect.

yeah I have heard that Coil song and it seems pretty appropriate

yeah I was about to say that Big Star's "Take Care" was another good one but then I remembered they did a reunion album a few years ago.

Love Spreads. Best comeback single and best closer.

you've forgotten THE FOZ, Nick XD

(which is a WAY more appropriate career-closer for that shambles of a band)

Arab Strap - There is No Ending

The Dismemberment Plan - "Ellen And Ben"

Mr. Bungle - "Goodbye Sober Day"

Dead Boys "Ain't it Fun"

In the unintended irony category, but also a candidate for best more generally, Roy Orbison's "Careless Heart".

I thought of "Ellen and Ben" but it's not exactly a career highlight IMO. there is something weirdly poignant about it, though.

GBV- Huffman Prairie Flying Field

Anthemic as hell, flight imagery about Dayton, a real feel of finality to it...

Your Party was really the perfect way for Ween to go out. Great pick

If the Cure ever actually release their long-forthcoming album, then 'Endsong' (part of their current live set) is the latest of their album closers that could also be career closers - and IMO a pretty worthy one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfcFZd9oGJk

I listened to The Hoople today, and it’s a good way to wrap up what that band did.

Faces- “Ohh La La”

Ooh rather

I shoulda mentioned the song! Roll Away the Stone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MyJHh451Y4

"Your Party" is a good call.

Also:
"Doin' Time" - Sublime
"Last Christmas" - Wham!

Mott the Hoople have a half-dozen elegiac tributes to themselves and rock and roll, any of which could stand as career capstones.

Wham! are a funny example, because "Last Christmas" came out as a single in 1984, 18 months before Music From the Edge of Heaven; also, their last album in the UK was The Final, whose final track is "The Edge of Heaven".

Rush's "The Garden".

Its tragic now that Neil's gone, but also incredibly profound and so perfect. What a sublime way for a band to take a final bow.

oh fuck, that one is perfect

The Faces put out a couple non-LP singles after Ooh La La--as did Mott after The Hoopoe, who went even further after Hunter left following those releases by putting out two more albums before retiring the band name.

Purple Mountains - Maybe I’m the only one for me

In the same vein, Jason Molina’s “A sad hard change”. Not his best song, but perhaps the most relevant and telling of him leaving soon. Normally even in his darkest tracks there’s some ray of hope, this one just felt like he had finally given up.

Isis - Threshold Of Transformation

I'm going to go ahead and post the tune, as I figure it is fairly obscure. Got to say Blue Cheer's last album "What Doesn't Kill You" is way better than you might expect and worth checking out, if you are into vintage heavy sludge. This is the final track and fitting for this thread I would think. It came out in 2007 and was their first record since 1991, when new.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWLM6bm7EoU

Steely Dan's "Everything Must Go" belongs in this conversation, though it may be a bit on the nose.

Merle Haggard’s last song: “I’m leavin’ in the early mornin’ / Eat my breakfast in the sky”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5xKRv23SVE

Jay Reatard - There is No Sun

Willis Alan Ramsay closes his only album with “northeast texas women”

This isn't on an album, and not a particularly great song – but "Footsteps on the Roof" (by Sal Trimachi & Ritchie Cordell) qualifies as the Shangri-Las' "career closer," as the b-side of their final single... and I think it's both nice & notable how the first few lines of its spoken section call back to "Dressed in Black," capping off the group's legacy:

I'll climb the stairs and shut the door
Turn the lock alone once more
I sit and stare at stars up above
And dream of the moment I'll run to my love
Come to me, come to me

(I realize "Dressed in Black" was only released the prior year; so the effect is stronger in retrospect!)

Junior Dad

Ahhh. My bad that was already said

yeah, shooting star -> memory lane -> little one -> a distorted reality...

is like...i can't even. the dude blew up the entire world

I always liked Pan Finale , on Pan Sonic's Gravitoni - but then I liked most of what they did, so yeah

I nominate Can's "In the Distance Lies the Future" from Rite Time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI9LplQdLxk

Not because it's any good. It's horrible! But it is a really good way of closing a career.

It definitely made sure that their career stayed closed.

I may be the only one who thinks this but I always thought ending their career on "Can Can" was hilarious. I dunno if I even count the reunion album, it's so weird that my brain can't even identify it as Can at all

on a similar note is YMO's final song being a strange and mostly unserious cover of "Pocketful of Rainbows"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPczRrT9pGM

anyway I know it was mentioned in the first post but XTC's "Wheel and the Maypole" is an all-timer in this regard, not only does it distill the circle of life theme that they've worked so hard but it also makes a good case for why the band had to end (because everything does) and in addition is such an incredible song that I'm still a little mad it wasn't a big hit

Bowie is an obvious one but along those lines I'd also nominate "The Rain" by Silver Apples, seems to have been written knowing fully well that it was gonna be his last song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbWN4YUnIDc

The last song on the last Motörhead album is a cover of "Sympathy for the Devil," which isn't the worst way to go out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt4Xx3vX3Lg

The Fall - "Nine Out Of Ten"

Assuming Hey What is the last album released under the Low moniker, then "The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off)" is such a chilling and portentous career closer (though the same would have been true of the last tracks on the two preceding albums as well).

Low - The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off)

― Tim F, Wednesday, 21 June 2023 05:32 (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ohhhhh fuck that's who I was thinking of! I knew there was a recent addition thy completely raised the bar for this

― imago, Wednesday, 21 June 2023 05:36 (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

*that

― imago, Wednesday, 21 June 2023 05:37 (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

I haven't often said on here how The Price You Pay is probably my favourite Low song these days

― imago, Wednesday, 21 June 2023 05:38 (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

I nominate Can's "In the Distance Lies the Future" from Rite Time

but their song on the Wenders soundtrack, Last Night Sleep, was recorded in 1991. wonder if any other bands made a last album, then followed with one last single
xxposts

Zep “I’m gonna crawl”
“If I dream too much tonight / somebody please bring me down”

xp XTC did, "Spiral"/"Say It" was recorded in 2002 so a couple years after their last album came out

The Police recorded new versions of "Don't Stand So Close To Me" and "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" in '86 and they were so notoriously terrible the latter was never officially released

I still don’t think Copeland even played on those 2 recordings

he plays the Fairlight since I think he physically couldn't drum due to a broken collarbone. does that count??

I think I mentioned this on another thread already but 1970s easy listening star Demis Roussos bookended his career with a nine minute prog epic named “Who Gives A Fuck”.

“third world man” on the original SD run works

The price you pay an absolutely devastating way to cap a career. Imago otm, my favourite Low track most days as well

One of the few tracks that will give me shivers up and down from merely singing the verses in my head

My internalisation of mimi's harmony in particular. Goes beyond notes. The interplay of their vocals on that track is the purest pathos music has to offer I

most of the suggestions upthread weren't even the last song from the last album in the end

For instance:

Blur "Battery In Your Leg"
ABBA "Like an Angel Passing Through My Room"
Nocturn / Aerial
Soon by MBV?!
The Who, "Tea and Theatre"

Will anyone nominate subsequent final tracks "The Heights"/"The Swan", "Ode to Freedom", "Among Angels", "Wonder 2" or "She Rocked My World" for this honour?

"She rocked my world" ??

Really?

The deluxe edition concludes with a song called "Danny and My Ponies" if that's any more promising.

Gentle Giant “That’s…All…There…Is”

I nominate Can's "In the Distance Lies the Future" from Rite Time

but their song on the Wenders soundtrack, Last Night Sleep, was recorded in 1991. wonder if any other bands made a last album, then followed with one last single
xxposts

Xpost
The Jam made a last album, then followed with one last single

Yeah, so "Shopping" would be their career closer.

In which case "You know my name (look up the number)" would do the similar job for The Beatles

wiki say: There was a further reunion in 1991 by Karoli, Liebezeit, Mooney and Schmidt to record a track for the Wim Wenders film Until the End of the World

xpost