Many bands change their output over time, often as a concious decision to evolve their sound. Sometimes it is an incremental process, and is often welcomed.
Then again, there are then times when a more drastic move in style is greeting with heresy by the fans. I’ve seen some of my favourite bands do both, and it is with that in mind that fuels this week’s TT.
…and here is where the inspiration for this week’s TT came from. Seeing their early video for A Film For The Future on MTV2 on Sunday reminded me of a band I used to love. Much of the band’s early output was chaotic, punk-influenced stuff that was all jagged edges and hummable choruses. Oh, and the slightly unexpected post-rock influences (early track Captain, er, bears the sound of a band who have been listening to Slint‘s Good Morning Captain, let’s just say). The thing is, as they gained more success, they tried to turn into REM, but a deeply uninteresting variation thereof. And to add insult to this? The “best of” released earlier this year completely ignores their earliest, and best tracks…
Speaking of which, actually…remember when REM used to be good? Let’s say, the period from ’87 (the album Document) to ’92 (album Automatic For The People), where the band didn’t put a single foot wrong over the course of four albums. I should also add – apart from a handful of earlier singles, almost all of my favourite REM tracks come from this period. After that, they seemed to lose touch with what made them so good. Monster was frankly a bloody mess – riding on the coattails of grunge was not a good idea, and after that they then increasingly disappeared into a realm where it was difficult to care about any song they released, as most of it was pure wallpaper music. There is one exception to this whole period, though – The Great Beyond. Written for the film Man on the Moon, to me it appears to be the only song REM have actually put any heart into in the past fifteen years.
The Manic’s change in direction was, perhaps, enforced. Their first three albums were characterised by intensity, Richey’s detailed lyrics that James could never make scan, and an attitude that made them almost unmatched. With Richey’s disappearance, things obviously changed. Everything Must Go, the album released after he vanished, had the spectre of Richey looming all over it – particularly as he wrote the lyrics for five of the songs. My favourite Manics song of all is one of these five, in fact: Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky, a song that for some reason still never fails to make me cry. It also had a feeling of defiance (lead single from it, A Design For Life, simply seethes with it) that has since been unmatched. Later albums descended into mawkish soft rock that, to paraphrase an older Manics song, was all surface and no feeling, and now when a new release arrives, I sadly no longer care.
Another band that I long since ceased to care about. Back in the early nineties, the Chili’s were untouchable. Party monsters that lived the rock’n’roll lifestyle as much as they sung about it, they were also a kick-ass band that just kept on writing great songs. I’m not sure exactly where on record they ceased being any good – although I think Californication was probably the last straw. While half of the album was ok, in the main it was lacking all the “funk”. I saw them live at Reading that year (’99), though, and they rocked. Since then the funk has all vanished entirely, leaving yet another run-of-the-mill rock band. What a waste.
More funk-based stuff, in fact. Incubus appeared in the mid-nineties, a hard-rocking, funk-influenced band that got lumped in with nu-metal (like so many other bands of the time), despite not having much in common with many of the other bands. First album proper S.C.I.E.N.C.E. was fantastic fun, never taking itself too seriously, while next album Make Yourself saw them heading into far more “radio-friendly” territory, that resulted in a preponderance of drippy ballads and a handful of the more uptempo, heavier tracks that they had previously done so well. Three albums have been released since, and none of them have been of any interest to me at all…
I used to love this band. Their early stuff was a crazy mix of Welsh, English, Psychedelia and indie rock (the Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (In Space) EP being a particular high point), and the first album proper dumped even more influences into the mix, as well as showing off an almost casual brilliance at writing great pop songs. Their track The Man Don’t Give A Fuck will forever be their creative high point, and while they have kept on with the crazy mix of influences, later albums have simply not held the interest by being, well, boring. Some feat for a bad that were so interesting to start with…
Watch on YouTube
Of all of the bands mentioned here, it is probably this band that got the most negative comment when there was a major change in sound. While Apop had always been gradually evolving their sound (from the rough-edged electronics of their beginnings, to the Goth leanings of 7, to the hands-in-the-air euphoria of the singles on Welcome To Earth, into the smooth, barely-song-based electronica of much of Harmonizer), little prepared their fanbase for the almost total about-turn on You And Me Against The World. Out went an awful lot, and in came more of a rock format, with occasional electronics filling the gaps. In fact, the perfect example of this was lead single In This Together, the explosion at the beginning of the video being a brilliant metaphor for how the band had left their past behind. The problem was, it seemed that the new style didn’t sit very well with existing fans, and so many people may well have ignored it. Which made their reception at Infest in 2007 all the more ironic, I guess…
Back in around 2001, I first heard a track by these guys called Kill The Fakes. A pounding brute of an electro-industrial track, the album it came from – Dos Unit – was pretty much more of the same, and was damned good. So imagine my annoyance when I pick up the latest album Unsocial Themes, to find it a considerably softened-up version of what came before, with none of the bite, the punch, or pretty much anything else…
The only band in this list who have totally disbanded, and also the only band here where I like their later stuff more than I do the earlier. Somehow their earlier stuff got lumped in with shoegazing – mainly because they use torrents of overlaid guitar sounds, I think – otherwise their sound was not much like anyone else. They initially disappeared from view for a while around ’94, after the more “goth” feel of Cuckoo appeared to move against the public mood. Oddly enough, this was where I gained an interest in the band – through the single Missing Link (heard on an NME tape if I recall) – as at the time their earlier stuff had left me cold. It was the Come Clean album – and more particularly the thundering single Chinese Burn – though, that truly had me hooked after that. Shame much of momentum behind their resurgence was stripped away by having Garbage steal their ideas, though, pretty much…
I said totally disbanded in the above entry because there is another band here who have pretty much given up, but are still just about together, playing odd shows in the US midwest. I got into Gravity Kills when Guilty was first released as a single (and I still own my CD copy of that, too), and I still listen to (and DJ with) that first album an awful lot. To a lesser extent the same applies to the second album Perversion, but when the third album (belatedly) arrived, it was a major disappointment. Gone were the heavily layered electronics, for a more organic sound that simply didn’t sound anywhere near as thrilling. The lead single – a lazy cover of Personal Jesus – was…ok. Shame, really.
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