Band's Final Albums, that got disregarded and ignored, and the band split, but are actually alright after all.

Just playing "Munki" Jesus and Mary Chain, and there ain't nothing wrong with it.

i love 'last throw of the dice' albums, and agree re Munki.

can i please add Diamond Hoo Ha by supergrass, and 99th dream by swervedriver, to this list ?

Default asnwer: Boo Radleys - Kingsize

I'd never even heard of Diamond Hoo-Haa. We should've been kinder to Supergrass I reckon.

yeah, i was kinda of the mindset that supergrass went out with a bang. but then i remembered that i'd been disregarding their records since the s/t one and they must've still been churning them out.

In fact, I believe they had finished their follow-up to DiamondhooHaa, but decided not to bother.

Pink Floyd, The Final Cut

Road To Rouen is the LP equivalent of "a great little run-around"

Cocteau Twins, Milk and Kisses
10,000 Maniacs, Our Time in Eden
Dead Can Dance, Spiritchaser

The first version (minus the bassist who walked 4 years earlier) of The Wonder Stuff released Construction For The Modern Idiot as their last album and i think it's great. Some beautiful sad stuff on there about growing older and such. Very melancholy, very lovely in parts. Of course they 'came back' again after but i don't think of *that* as The Wonder Stuff by god.

Lush - Lovelife (as asserted endlessly in the Lush albums poll)

disregarded?

At the time, yes.

I dunno, three hits and a sense that they'd 'broken through' and the next one would be even bigger, which made what happened even more tragic (beyond the personal, obv)

I came here to say "Milk and Kisses" but someone beat me to it.

Yes Please, though not great, isn't the train-wreck it's made out to be.

No, I never thought so, but it's a classic example.

The Beautiful South, Superbi

superbi? people were obviously turned off by the name.

You know, the classic example here is "Odessey & Oracle" except the disregard was more about lack of sales than lack of critical acclaim.

I guess "Free Peace Sweet" by Dodgy doesn't fit in here. It is a great album, and they broke up just afterwards, but it was also their biggest success in a lot of ways.

Yeah, so let's not list "successful" albums then the band split, we'll be here all day.

Oh hang on, we are anyway.

Van Der Graaf Generator - The Quiet Zone / The Pleasure Dome is more of a Peter Hammill solo album really as half the band had left by then, it has the air of contractual obligation but it's actually pretty good, probably the best "old proggers respond to new wave" attempt.

Yes - Drama (they did split sfter this but reformed only a couple of years later for 90125), one of their best imo but the prog fans were disappointed.

I completely agree with The Boo Radleys and Supergrass, both great albums that deserved a lot more.

I really rate the second and final Kenickie album. It's quite a dark album in places and they split just after it came out.

Pygmalion, maybe? I know it's well regarded now but what was the critical consensus about it at the time?

Carcass - Swansong.

"Calling All Stations" is not classic or anything, but was probably the best Genesis album since the self titled one in 1983 and surely better than its reputation.

is the point of this thread "if the records werent ignored they might not split"?

I also quite like the last Jesus Jones album. Not as strong as "Doubt" but still quite nice indeed.

It's not the 'point' as such, there may be a soupcon of it.

One typical consequence might be to lose one's recording contract, and that, for a lot of bands, means they break up.

i still need a copy of the sin of pride by the undertones. i've never even heard it! and i love them. i love positive touch and for a long time i thought that positive touch was their last album. positive touch definitely has its fans, but i never hear people talk about the sin of pride. i never even see it in stores. then again, maybe it just sucks.

speaking of the undertones reminds me :

final flame by that petrol emotion.

the band were no longer getting the TLC, nor sales, that they were used to, so had to release their final album on their own label.
this allowed them to release an album that sounded as they wished as opposed to falling prey to the demands of any suits.
the result was that the album was wall to wall excellence, and, to this day is the TPE that i listen to the most.

trompe le monde, pixies

oh man i want to believe that about the last that petrol emotion album, but everything after the first album kinda made me cringe. and i LOVE the first album. one of my favorite albums of the 80's. i should give babble another chance. i didn't dig it at the time, but i might like it now.

i've been on a serious gang of four kick lately. all of it sounds really good to me. even the later stuff and i have kinda ignored that stuff since the 80's.

which reminds me, what the hell does THIS album sound like:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_oUvAUjqKPbU/TCcPrFHZbII/AAAAAAAAAv0/l1KECqLhprI/s1600/sacredcity_front.jpg

(cuz, um, i was not a fan of go bang. was anyone? but i like the stuff before it. even though i haven't listened to any of that stuff since the 80's except for some early singles. i would definitely buy tench ep and jam science on vinyl if i saw them cheap. i know i have care somewhere.)

final frame = song craft of chemicrazy vs the guitars of their debut. it doesn't have the roli mosimann production thump a la babble.

i've often regreted that i didn't get that shriekback album upon its release, but not so much that i have gone out and tracked a copy down.
having said that, its not their final album.
they have released quite a few since then (and i think there is another due any day now ?)

xpost : go bang = the album even the band have disowned. album of 2008, cormorant, was more like big night music.

yeah, i consider any album that comes out almost a decade later to be a reunion album. so i doubt i would care about 21st century shriekback. but sacred city came out like 4 years after go bang? something like that.

ooh.
just remembered another one.

the future is medium : compulsion

fuckin' love this album when in the mood. the band upgraded their punk-n-grunge excess with add-on electronic noises, and made an album full of short sharp blast of pop noise.
no-one cared.
resulting in the guitarist going off to become an advocate of overcompressed productions under his jacknife lee alias.

thought this thread was going to be an impassioned defense of The Band's post-Robbie Robertson records ...

Rain Parade - Crashing Dream

A little bit hamstrung in places by a borderline 80's production sound, but it has a handful of great tunes.

http://bobchaos.com/squeeze/mailedD1.jpg

people like us - the mamas & the papas

Beulah's "Yoko" got some negative reviews from critics who liked their previous album and wanted more of the same. But given the changes in the key member's personal lives, they weren't in a mood to rehash their past glories. I like it when bands never (essentially) make the same record twice.

Another is the Yardbirds' "Little Games" - largely ignored upon its US release in 1967, and not even issued in the UK until years later, it's better than it's reputation. It suffers some from producer Mickey Most's insistance of a couple of lame intended singles written by hacks, but the lack of studio polish on the album tracks (some done in one take) gives it a loose feel that works on the bluesier numbers. And its best tracks (like "Tinkor Tailer" and "Glimpses") are proto-Zep workouts complete with bowed guitar and some licks and chord sequences Pagey would reuse in his next band, plus a pretty, elegiac song that Keith Relf wrote on his own.

Badfinger's last, of course. Although virtually everything they did apart from the first singles was really disregarded and ignored, the lack of attention went even worse with their two Warner releases.

you are a fan of say no more? pleased to meet you. i like airwaves too. heck, i like all of them.

Screaming Trees, "Dust"

geir, you like latter-day hollies albums? i just got a crazy steal from 1978 and i really like it. they have some great slept-on stuff from the 70's. moving finger is one of my favorite hollies albums. i never count a band out.

distant light is really good too. i think i gave away my copy of romany...now i want to hear it.

I haven't heard anything later than "Hollies", which is fine enough. "Distant Light" I am no fan of. I feel that and "Romany"... they just donæt sounds like I expect Hollies to sound. A bit of the same flaw as with 70s Kinks. On those two albums they were trying to much to be a "rock" band, instead of concentrating on the twee pop harmonies they were so good at.

Yes Please, though not great, isn't the train-wreck it's made out to be.

I think this is a great answer. I personally love the album. There's a great bit on Tony Wilson's commentary for the 24 Hour Party People film where he wrestles with his thoughts on the album and finally arrives at the realization that he doesn't like the album, but all of his reasons for disliking it have everything to do with the circumstances surrounding the album and not the actual music; which he sort of implies never really had a chance of fair assessment anyway. He summarizes all of this with something like, ". . .and I hate that that is the case." Needless to say, but he was obviously very conflicted about it until the end.

I've not heard the "reunion" album, Uncle Dysfunktional, out of pure apathy.

And rusho—

We Will Meet Again is stellar. I love that album a lot. It was Bill's first studio album in two years at that point — a really long gap, especially for him.

Two Rainbows Daily is also a fantastic record. It's the only album of Hugh Hopper's I've ever heard, outside of Soft Machine of course.

personal faves (good call on Brel!)

The Blood Brothers Young Machetes
American Music Club The Golden Age
Leonard Cohen You Want It Darker
Pulp We Love Life
Pinetop Seven The Night's Bloom
Magnolia Electric Co. Josephine
Vic Chesnutt At the Cut (smudging the timeline a bit)
Elliott Smith From a Basement on the Hill
Woods of Ypres Woods 5: Grey Skies and Electric Light
The Wrens The Meadowlands

The Wrens The Meadowlands

So we're all in agreement that the follow up is never going to come out, then.

Man, I can't believe it's been nearly ten years since 'In Turkish Waters' was released via Stereogum, and still no bloody album.

i'm with you on blackstar being top 5 bowie, alfred. all the more unexpected for me because i'm not sure i'd put anything he did after Let's Dance in a top ten, even.

We Love Life is a great record - a lot of superb stuff on that album.

So we're all in agreement that the follow up is never going to come out, then.

I'm daring them to prove me wrong!!

I'd disqualify Idlewild from Alfred's list (likewise Cut The Crap from his exclusions), if the idea is to consider final coherent studio projects by the band. There's barely an album's worth* of songs that Big Boi and Andre have worked on since Stankonia, let alone on that album. Big's performance numbers in the film all being Speakerboxxx cuts are a huge indicator that his contributions to the album were written and recorded months or more after 3K's.

*this compilation would be a GREAT listen, though.

One for the initial thread premise, though not a band per se: in 1998, 14 years after the last Wah! record, seven after his last album, Pete Wylie did a new and splendid The Mighty Wah! album for a major label with a big budget, put a band together including Mike Joyce on drums... then got dropped after promos went out. Album came out two years later to critical acclaim but little distribution, and it took seventeen years and crowdfunding for Wylie to scrape out another studio record under his own name.

So we're all in agreement that the follow up is never going to come out, then.

― Johnny Fever, Sunday, May 27, 2018 8:19 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it’s gonna come out, it’s just gonna be another five years

Gaucho not bad

a few more I somehow forgot

Unwound Leaves Turn Inside You
Fugazi The Argument
Jawbreaker Dear You

I think We Love Life is a key album in this thread. It wasn't completely ignored - I think the feeling was that they were onto a good thing according to those who heard it, but it just wasn't the time for Pulp. Which was a bit wank.

Also not bands per se, but I'm partial to Kevin Ayers's The Unfairground and Mose Allison's The Way of the World.

This thread/idea inspired me to listen to Queen's Innuendo because I really only remembered "I'm Going Slightly Mad" and "These Are the Days of Our Lives" (which I always liked), but the rest of it is pretty high quality too.

Fugazi The Argument

This was neither disregarded now ignored. It was a big deal; just like the release of any Fugazi album.

*nor

It's the only Fugazi album I never have the urge to listen to.

lmao I completely missed the point of the thread and just started listing great final albums. durrrrr.

xpYou Want It Darker certainly wasn't "disregarded and ignored," so not that for once I'm the thread police, rather than prey of same.
As for Unfairground, don't know that it's worth seeking out unless you find it posted on YouTube or somewhere else that doesn't require spending money or risking infection, but yeah it has its moments; here's a rejected pitch I wrote for the late Paper Thin Walls, where a track of a new or forthcoming album would be posted (sometimes a whole album, if we got permission), for as long as allowed---this was a fresh idea the mid-00s, or so we hoped. Here tis:

Kevin Ayers, “Unfairground”
From The Unfairground (Gigantic)
vintage violets //Out Now
(demo-pitch, no go, would have been pub. in 2007)

Aye, ‘tis the almost-title track (“The” dropped to make the protest more emphatic?)
from Kevin Ayers' first album since 1992's Still Life With Guitar,
which title would be all too appropriate for
several tracks in this set, despite the all-star accompaniment (Hugh
Hopper, Phil Manzanera, Architecture In Helsinki, Euro Childs, many
more). At first he confines himself to a gruff petulance, and the
backup's deferential, not to mention genteel and drippy (despite my
loving some of their own albums). But "Wide Awake" pulls him into the
music, of his writing and the ensemble, "and when I'm dancing and
singing along, it doesn't matter if it's right, doesn't matter if
it's wrong," which suits both his stoical and hedonistic tendencies
(his own press kit mentions---well, never mind 'til edit).
The song ends with a jolt. But he's still
awake, and has a "Brainstorm": "So you shout, so you scream, 'Give me
back my dream,' but if it's lost if it's gone, I won't keep hanging
on, so the storm, can blow me away," with cracking loose-wire guitar
after that, waiting for him, although not quite
dangerous-enough-seeming for the context, to my taste, anyway. But
then "Unfairground" finds him lured back into the sporting life, prowling
the galleries, seeking a prize, 'til the carnival music slides him back
into the country daylight, another sucker observing "birds in singing
in a cage. You understand you lost one. You step outside your
rage"(yeah, because we get a jolting, loping beat on this song, a
shrug, an elbow, a number of turns, also with guitar strum and
bouncing bass bow for a while, and he's past the aforementioned
petulance) "But what's left to believe in. The children in the lake? I
didn't see them go under. Let's try, another take." Told you there
were some jolts and turns! Not that he's that far from the tunnel of
love or his beloved (bottle) or "you", whom he's murmuring all this to,
the old terseness serving him well for the moment(in balance with imagery and
stealthy progress). If we didn't get to use this song, those others
would be okay, and I could still talk about this 'un (oh yeah, and in the
last one, "Run Run Run", he seems to be married again, and handling it
okay, face-to-face-wise; some good terse vitality here too)
Several keepers for the deep fan mix.

fIrehose's Mr. Machinery Operation fits the topic so well. It's a good one!

Does "Laughing Stock" qualify here? I had no sense of its reception, all the way out in Australia where Talk Talk were never big.

Fucksake Laughing Stock doesn't belong here, this is a thread for forgotten albums not universally-revered classics

I'm assuming Volcano! are now defunct, in which case Pinata was a lovely low-key way to bow out

I mean, given the shifted rules of the discussion since the bump (best final albums) then obviously Laughing Stock belongs in that conversation, sure

Oh the idea is *still* disregarded rather than just disregarded at the time. Then Pygmalion doesn’t count either.

Ass Ponys: Lohio

O.L.D. - Formula

Old Lady Drivers got weirder and weirder but the last record turned a proper corner.

Wiki says it's Earache's worst selling record to date and indeed you can buy a copy on Ebay for £5 directly from the label. It is actually a pretty remarkable record, nobody cared then, nobody does now and Dubin and Plotkin went on to bigger things.

Gentle Giant’s Civilian is kind of a nice record, if you like The Cars

I thoroughly enjoy listening to The Jethro Tull Christmas Album several times every December.
I also think their final album with original & non-thematic songs, J-Tull Dot Com, is much better than it might be rated or expected to be.

OMG of course - cosign MaresNest 100% there, it's wonderful

Amused by the album title “J-Tull Dot Com”!

OTOH, that album title makes me irrationally depressed.

I would say think tank if the magic turd didn’t come out

The post-Rankine Associates album "Perhaps".

It's mad to me that this has been so completely forgotten. I've spoken to fans of the band who had no idea it existed. I mean come on, it's got "Breakfast", for heaven's sake! That's up there with anything on the first two albums.

But I guess as it's not considered "canon"(and Rankine presumably has no interest in getting it reissued given that he wasn't involved), no deluxe reissues or even an acknowledgement that it exists.

Sudden Sway - Ko-Opera. Album of trippy balearic songs that most fans missed or maybe couldn't find.

Sudden Sway - Ko-Opera. Album of trippy balearic songs that most fans missed or maybe couldn't find.

thank you for reminding me of it.
I have the cd edition hidden away, been years since I heard it.

Never liked it much tbh.

But I guess as it's not considered "canon"(and Rankine presumably has no interest in getting it reissued given that he wasn't involved), no deluxe reissues or even an acknowledgement that it exists.

it was the second-or-third-last album, not the final album, and had a deluxeish reissue in 2002 (with the previously unreleased penultimate album)

Byrds

It might not qualify as it wasn't ignored, the original 5 Byrds back together again must have been a bit of a big deal, but the critical response has always been lukewarm and I don't think it was the chart-topping commercial success to put it on par with their classic work either.
However, I really like half of the album (Full Circle, Sweet Mary, Changing Heart, Laughing & the Neil Young covers) and while I find the other half not so noticable, those songs don't strike me as bad songs either.

I thought I was probably alone in thinking Perhaps is the best Associates album.

Bite by Altered Images is one of my favourite last albums that didn't get the attention it deserves. It's not like it was ignored compared to their previous two albums or anything, they were pretty underrated too. I just think Bite is absolutely perfect and I'm still not sure why Don't Talk To Me About Love and Bring Me Closer weren't massive number one singles.

don't talk to me about love was pretty damn huge in my new wave universe at the time. the local college radio station played the hell out of it. i don't know about chart numbers though. i feel like they must have sold a ton of copies in the u.s. of that album because i still see it everywhere.

all three of their albums are still really common on the east coast and sell for pennies because of their ubiquity. they were club faves here.

Man, I used to see Altered Images albums all the time back in Reno. I always just figured they were like a cheesy Culture Club/Thompson Twins sort of synth pop band. The discussion here has definitely got me interested now.

don't talk to me about love was pretty damn huge in my new wave universe at the time. the local college radio station played the hell out of it. i don't know about chart numbers though. i feel like they must have sold a ton of copies in the u.s. of that album because i still see it everywhere.

― scott seward

Even though I live in the U.S. now, I was thinking about their success in the U.K really. Bite reached number 16 and hung around for a few weeks, which seems disappointing compared how brilliant and commercial it is. It should have been Parallel Lines big with a number of huge hit singles. Instead the chart positions went like this,

Don't Talk To Me About Love 7
Bring Me Close 29
Love To Stay 46
A Change Of Heart 83

I remember reading that the record company were expecting huge things from them at that stage. Half of it is produced by Mike Chapman and half by Tony Visconti which suggests they were aiming high. I'm really not sure what happened. As for the U.S. you are right. I see it here in Minnesota all the time and it's never more than $4 (we have a couple of copies where I work at Agharta records here in Saint Paul!!). I don't see the first two albums as much.

I've been coveting this all afternoon. Payday is Friday!

I just remember re "I Could Be Happy" and "Happy Birthday," thinking that Claire Grogan sounded too damn chirpy and quirky. Might have liked others better then, might like 'em all now, but wouldn't spend much to find out---not four bucks---maybe it's all on youtube.

It is pretty much all on youtube, but their records are easily worth 4 clams apiece imo. (I could be) happy to see all the love here.

Altered Images were my favourite band when I was 5 (quickly surpassed by Madness when I was 6). Don't think I've heard that 3rd album though.