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Dying Bands Last Great Moments

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I know R.E.M.’s album Around The Sun isn’t regarded as one of their finest moments, but in my humble opinion, I would put Leaving New York right up there with some of their best songs. What other great songs spring to my mind from bands/artists in the twilight years of their sometimes flagging careers?

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    • And Living Well Is The Best Revenge from Accelerate, plus Mine Smell Like Honey from Collapse… R.E.M. Truly had an Indian summer with their last two, and I wish they’d toured them.

      Other swansongs are When It Began from the Replacements’ All Shook Down, and pretty much anything from Whiskeytown’s Pneumonia, which came out after they split. And does Odessey and Oracle count?

  2. Although I would argue long into the night that Depeche Mode are still very much a going concern and I do gorge on new material as greedily as I ever did, It is fair to say that their best work is probably behind them. I can see them packing it in before the end of this decade after a miraculously implausible 40 years. And yet there is the odd absolute belter in the later work and I really enjoy this occasional ability to pull out a fresh rabbit from a new hat.

    The reason I like 2009’s Wrong is it’s confidence. The lyric is direct, simple and amusing. Unlike most of their somgs using the lyrical blueprint of “pain and suffering in various tempos” Wrong makes me think of the gallows humour of Larkin and Spike Milligan. Seen outside of the music, the words make perfect sense.

    There’s also an amusing doggerel rhyme I heard once and once only on an old NZ TV show hosted by revered and long-deceased comedian Billy T James. It was called “My Dad didn’t like me much” and tells the story of a young boy going about his day to day business and unwittingly thwarting repeated attempts by his father to kill him. Much funnier than it sounds. Anyway, here it is :

    I was born with the wrong sign
    In the wrong house
    With the wrong ascendancy
    I took the wrong road
    That led to
    The wrong tendencies
    I was in the wrong place
    At the wrong time
    For the wrong reason
    And the wrong rhyme
    On the wrong day
    Of the wrong week
    Using wrong methods
    With the wrong technique
    Wrong
    Wrong
    There’s something wrong with me, chemically
    Something wrong with me inherently
    The wrong mix
    In the wrong genes
    I reached the wrong ends
    By the wrong means
    It was the wrong plan
    In the wrong hands
    The wrong theory
    For the wrong man
    The wrong eyes
    On the wrong prize
    The wrong questions
    With the wrong replies
    Wrong
    Wrong
    I was marching to the wrong drum
    With the wrong scum
    Pissing out the wrong energy
    Using all the wrong lines
    And the wrong signs
    With the wrong intensity
    I was on the wrong page
    Of the wrong book
    With the wrong rendition
    Of the wrong hook
    With the wrong moon
    Every wrong night
    With the wrong tune playing
    Till it sounded right, yeah
    Wrong
    Wrong

    • Great song.

      Such a shame the hit to meh ratio has been reduced – since Ultra I would suggest. Is it a Genesis situation, where the departure of the misfit (Alan Wilder Steve Hackett) changed the dynamic forever?

    • “It is fair to say that their best work is probably behind them.”

      Probably!?

      I have given up being disappointed with material since Ultra.
      SOTU, apart from Wrong was just abysmal.
      Spirit is spirit draining in its hopelessness and dirge like non-musicality.
      Some folk say MLG doesn’t want to write melodic pop tunes with atmosphere any more.
      To me, it’s pretty clear that he simply can’t.
      Attempts like Soft Touch or whateve it was called and So Much Love… they’re just shite aren’t they.

      And watching them live now is just embarrassing.

      I honestly wish they’d pack it in and stop spoiling the memory.

    • I think Playing The Angel was the last album I properly got into. Rather than just listening a couple of times because it’s the new Mode and still hope…

      Playing The Angel has A Pain That I’m Used To, John The Revelator, Precious and Lilian, all which, to my ears, stand up to their very best.

    • I like Spirit far more than Delta Machine and SOTU. I agree about Playing the Angel. The songs mentioned are top notch but I would also add Nothing’s Impossible and The Sinner in Me.

      I used to listen to new Depeche Mode albums and identify almost immediately which ones are going to be keepers. Spirit has Cover Me, The Last Time and, dammit, The Worst Crime – which I initially thought was definite low point but I have grown to love it. SOTU has Wrong and Ghost.

      Delta Machine had a weak first single and there were no hidden treasures. I gave it a year or so but listening became a chore for that one.

  3. I’ll bring Del Amitri out of mothballs and cite their final album “Can You Do Me Good” and the last chance single “Just before You Leave”. Completely different sound backing another of Curries melancholy lyrics. A fabulous funk guitar oozes over the Hammond organ sounding backing driven by a hypnotic tick tock drum sound with occasional harp for good measure. If Nile Rodgers had produced it, it would have been a number 1. It’s glorious and marked the end of the road. They’re back touring next year but I doubt they’ll play this……….

    • Really enjoyed that one,will explore more of that album….big fan of the first three albums then ,like others maybe,lost track but have great memories of a gig at Reading Uni in early days.

  5. Most people who like Floyd don’t seem to like The Endless River much. And strangely enough, people who don’t like Floyd feel the same. I quite like it. Especially after the just ok AMLOR and the, to my ears, appalling Division Bell. One track on it really stands out for me: It’s What We Do. I think it’s one of the band’s very best instrumentals. It harks back to their sound before Waters decided he was Floyd, and wouldn’t have sounded at all out of place on the amazingly brilliant Wish You Were Here. In fact, had it cropped up on the earlier Obscured By Clouds, I’d have considered it the best track on an excellent album.
    Ps. Smoke a big spliff and project the video large onto the wall of your living room.

  6. A good example might be the Zombies’ ‘Time of the Season’. Hadn’t they broken up before it was released and became a huge hit in the US? Certainly, going out on a high.

    If we can extend the OP question to dying bands going out on a high in terms of performances, this is my fave – the first Mahavishnu Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall, New York, on December 28 1973, two days away from collapsing forever in the snow at Detroit. The band had been on borrowed time for at least six months, in terms of personal issues within it, with Jan Hammer and Jerry Goodman purportedly not speaking to John McL. Matters came out into the open when all five were interviewed in August for a Crawdaddy magazine feature – which John McL read on a plane to dates in Japan in September.

    This really is what burning out not fading away sounds like:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RorShOoUZF8

    0:00 you know, you know
    5:42 i wonder
    14:52 awakening
    34:45 hope
    36:34 vital transformation
    43:40 dream

    …John McLaughlin – guitar
    …Jan Hammer – keyboards
    …Jerry Goodman – violin
    …Rick Laird – bass guitar
    …Billy Cobham – drums

    • The Odessey and Oracle album wasn’t released until after the Zombies had split up. And it’s now what nearly all of their risen-without-trace reputation is based on. On account of it being fookin boss.

      • Does that mean my vague memory was more or less right? And yes, although I’ve never heard the album, from what one reads (for years) it seems clear that that’s what they’re most lauded for. I suppose it must be relatively unusual for any bands last album to be their stand-out best. One could argue it for the Beatles’ ‘Abbey Road’ but then they spoil it all by releasing ‘Let It Be’ after it…

  10. Fool’s Gold by The Stone Roses, despite being released within six months of their debut album and the best thing they ever did, is also, in hindsight, the last great moment of a band with little left in the tank.

  11. Back in 1996, a ten year old Tony Japanese only had a couple of Now compilations in his record collection, one of which was Now 34 – which features the Spice Girls, Oasis and Underworld to name three. Buried towards the end of the 2nd CD is a track by a group I’d never heard before called OMD (which I would later find out stands for ‘Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’). The song is called ‘Walking on the Milky Way’.

    Here they are being introduced by Steve Lamaq on the long-forgotten TOTP:

    • It’s a great song. I repeat my assertion that it sounds like a song that Oasis could have performed brilliantly. The thing about Andy McCluskey is that he is a prolific and very skilled songwriter. Atomic Kitten had him writing songs for them when he felt that he couldn’t really appear on TOTP anymore himself.

      This was the period when his long-time friend and collaborator Paul Humphries wasn’t involved in OMD. The songs didn’t suffer that much – they were still good, but it is clear that the PH influence is crucial. I think OMD’s first 4 LPs are among the finest in all popular music and the stuff they have done in the last 10 years echoes those electro-heavy experimental LPs rather than the softer, more popular love songs came about in the mid 80s. It’s obvious that the OMD partnership loves the gloomy electro soundscapes and songs about power stations but McCluskey himself will turn his hand to anything.

    • Saw them at Rewind Festival a couple of years ago – was expecting a “going through the motions play the hits and get off stage” affair – they really put on a good show, and had the songs to back it up.
      Andy McCluskey has said the band always wanted to be a British Kraftwerk, and to an extent achieved that (OK, more of a pop version of Kraftwerk) and did indeed produce some of the best Synthpop era albums (yes, better than Ultravox and Gary Numan to name 2 (supposed) direct competitors).
      I don’t think they would’ve had the longevity, or the success, if they’d stayed on Factory.

      Still have trouble forgiving the chunky knitwear in the Maid Of Orleans video though

      • New album, Punishment of Luxury,* is good in the same way all of theirs were, 4 or 5 crackers on side 1, then some dull old dross to the end.
        *Punilux? Were’n’t they a band?

      • Yes, I would. The self-titled debut (with Messages and Electricity) is my fave. Follow-up, Organisation, is their equivalent to Radioactivity. Architecture & Morality features two songs about Joan of Arc, one without a pulse – still one of the weirdest singles to grace the top 40. Dazzle Ships went way out there as a concept, featured a single with vocals by a Speak & Spell machine, and stiffed commercially. Junk Culture went for the pop jugular in an attempt to avoid being dropped by the label and is their jumping the shark moment. By 1985’s Crush they were being produced by Stephen Hague and the plot was lost.

        • With OMD it depends what you want. They can do traditional verse/chorus songs and do that really well – but they also have no problem with delivering things that often leave you a bit baffled. I like that kind of thing – which is why I grew to love them.

          Organisation was the first of theirs I really got into. Enola Gay was the ridiculously catchy single that led me there but the rest of the songs are not like that – but nothing too “out there”. It leads nicely to Architecture and Morality, which is magnificent from soup to nuts. The title track is an instrumental that sounds like the opening sequence to TV’s Riverside.

          So they throw in strange stuff and most of the time it works. These two albums feature longish near-instrumentals – one about a power station (Stanlow) and another about a disused oil platform on the North Sea (Sealand). These two could be one double album, I would say.

          From there – I recall going back to OMD (the first album) and although it’s a grrreat it’s a bit tinny compared to the those other two and very much a collection of good songs rather than any attempt at a concept or atmosphere creation.

          And then Dazzle Ships. Such a brilliant record – for The Romance of the Telescope alone – but there’s also fun to be had with ABC Auto Industry, Radio Prague, This is Helena and the title track (in four roman numeralled parts). None of these are songs, as such. Just so you know.

          After that, fentonsteve’s right – they seemed to find out that you can make a helluva living out of mid-tempo love songs, especially if they are in Brat Pack movies. Junk Culture, Crush, Pacific Age, Liberator and Sugar Tax have their moments and hot singles but they just don’t compare to the first four. Recent stuff is good, though.

          • I concur regarding Organisation and Architecture & Morality – experimental electro-pop at its finest. And they made some brave (I’m talking on context here) decisions…how great was it that they followed one smash hit single about Joan of Arc with another, completely different, smash hit single about Joan of Arc? I saw them in 1981 on the A & M tour, and they began the show with Stanlow – unexpected and brilliant.
            Love Dazzle Ships too.

            • I am really sorry for writing “hot singles “- I meant “hit singles”.

              The second Joan of Arc (“Maid of Orleans”) was almost an anti-song, with a long and discordant intro which wunnerful R1 would have *hated*, a strange stuttery drum beat and no chorus. But it’s a great thing and sold really well.

              I saw them on the Dazzle Ships tour – supported by Cocteau Twins!

  14. I agree with both Ghost Town & Abbey road.

    I would like to add (FYC) the wonderful Goody two shoes by Adam Ant.

    Yes he had chart hits after GTS, but I thought it was a fine way to sign off with him bothering the sharp end of the charts.

  15. Hüsker Dü, Warehouse Songs and Stories. Although I have to say the Grant Hart tracks are not my thing, but this was where my love started for everything Bob Mould-related.

    XTC – Apple Venus and Wasp Star (I’ll treat them as one unit for the purposes of an argument). I usually argue that the way in to XTC is from either end of their catalog. OOAA.

    Grant Lee Buffalo, Jubilee. Absolutely fantastic album, and their best by a looong way for mine.

  16. If we’re talking albums, Japan are the only band I can think of who improved markedly with each studio album, to call it a day after their final masterpiece.

  17. Guillemots – their last album was called Hello Land and was supposed to be the first of 4 releases in the year it came out.
    Sadly it was the only one and nothing since – shame because it is their best album.

  18. The Gang of Four were always a bit underwhelming on official albums: they arguably never matched the very first EP or early radio sessions. But on the scrappy third album, they came up with We Live As We Dream Alone and for the last time delivered on their attempt to make Marxist art school pop.

  23. Twenty Four years of age! Great song , extremely dull album. Get Ready also only had one good song, Crystal, which wasn’t particularly New Ordery. Can’t even remember what the next album was called and Music Complete was OK even if the bassist was Hooky-lite.

    • Quite. I recently bought the album again because the Japanese version has the two Weatherall mixes from the rare-as-rocking-horse-poo French promo single, but it hasn’t got any better with age.

      Their bowing out at Reading Festival in 1993 was yesterday, wasn’t it? Well, maybe not yesterday but last week. Last month, tops. Where have the last 24 years gone? Moosey and I are stuck in the 90s.

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