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?
Dying Bands Last Great Moments
Other notable late REM songs would include Supernatural Superserious from Accelerate, and Uberlin from Collapse Into Now.
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?
Saw them on Accelerate tour at Twickenham 2008. Really enjoyed it. Orange Crush was a standout.
TrypF – spot on with Pneumonia. Fabulous album. For me, second only to Heartbreaker in Ryan’s entire canon especially because Caitlin Cary gets more prominence (and her first few albums are great, too!).
Yeah Uberlin is a great song, I quite like most of that album too.
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.
The latest album took some getting in to, but I stuck with it – and now think it’s excellent.
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.
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.
We will have to disagree on that one. I adore One More Last Hurrah and Last Cheap Shot At The Dream, but Just Before You Leave is too string- and harp-heavy for mine.
But I see they tour next year, Dave, as DA rather than just Justin Currie
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.
Funnily enough, Obscured By Clouds is my favourite Floyd album (they are not a band I enjoy listening to very much). The Endless River is second. I can also tolerate Meddle if you replace the howling dog with Embryo.
I would never have imagined that the only other person I know* to come out in favour of The Endless River would be you Tiggs. Colour me surprise!
*Not literally
TER got quite a good reception on here as I recall. Except for the sleeve and the vocal tracks.
I hate* to be pedantic but in the interests of truth, clarity and justice for all, that should be vocal ‘track’, singular. On account of there only being one and everything. And yes, it’s by far the worst track on the album.
* ie. love
I may be wrong, but I seem to remember @dai liked it too.
Never heard it, mate. Also not a big fan. Like Meddle especially the original pressing LP I picked up for $3 earlier this year
I haven’t heard it either.
Fearless came up on shuffle yesterday. I love the way both Dave and Rog sound like a couple of blokes idly singing to themselves whilst doing the washing-up. It’s, like, the 1971est track in the world.
Sorry, dai. Must have been Gary all along. You both look so similar to me. 😘
Somebody looks similar to Gary? Surely not… or have the gods been kind to us mere mortals…
I’ve got a hat.
Ohhh. Don’t get on a horse as well, that would drive us over the edge.
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:
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…
Frankly, the Zombies had done very little up until after they broke up! Only one album (in 1965), a biggish hit with She’s Not There (12) and a minor hit with Tell Her No (42), although those two did better in the US, and that was about it. Odessey and Oracle had the great Time Of The Season, which got it noticed, and then it gained cult status. Seeing them live made me realise how thin their material actually is.
Unfortunately, for me, there’s a two-note harmony/interval in TotS that really grates on me. It would have been possible to write this differently, but maybe they thought it was more striking. It’s the notes involved in the pay-off line (‘lovvv-innnnng’). Ghastly.
Odessey and Oracle is absolutely outstanding. So much that Time of the Season is nowhere near the best song on it. Care of Cell 44, This Could Be Our Year, Brief Candles etc. Staggeringly good and really great live.
What Dai said.
What Dai said too. And no mention of ‘Friends of Mine’ or ‘A Rose for Emily’, which are also beautiful.
and ‘Changes’
What was said in the article @Colin-h
I’m going to argue that DTD, while not a typical BC album, was a really good record in its own right and is up there with their earlier work.
The album was an object lesson in how NOT to finish a recording career. But this track showed that Joe Strummer still had some fire left.
The Clash – This Is England
Don’t for a second think that was yer lot from Joe.
Streetcore, his final, posthumous album with the Mescaleros contains some great tunes.
Coma girl, Ramshackle day Parade and a Johnny Cash tribute…Long Shadow.
Hell, he even has a stab at Bob Marley’s Redemption Song and pulls it off.
Seemed to me he was on the cusp of a comeback of sorts.
A Strumback?
Vive The Mescaleros.
3 very fine albums indeed.
By Streetcore (the best of the 3 in my opinion), Joe was seemingly back comfortable with his surroundings
Oh what might’ve been?
Agree re Mescaleros – if only.
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.
Ten Storey Love Song would suggest otherwise.
I prefer the B side, What the world is waiting for. My favourite Roses track (apart maybe from that wonderful Waterfall rehearsal from Made of Stone)
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.
Long forgotten TOTP? It’s on twice a week!
Get with the times! It’s all about the soon to be seminal ‘Friday Night With… ‘ these days.
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
I have tix for the new tour @ 9.30Club, and am very excited. My traveling companion…less so.
OMD somehow passed me by, almost completely. I may have to use the modern miracle that is Spotify to put that right. Start at the start??
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?
And indeed History Of Modern before than.
Probably best to start with Greatest Hits and go from there.
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!
Hardly a long career, but going out with ‘Ghost Town’ was a pretty good way for The Specials to sign off.
Abbey Road always seems a pretty glorious final great moment from a clearly dying band.
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.
A phenomenal record. It didn’t feel like the end at the time, but it was. The follow up, Strip, bombed.
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.
Love Grant Lee Buffalo Jubilee – nothing else they did came close but wasn’t it their first album?
Not AFAIK.
Fuzzy (1993)
Mighty Joe Moon (1994)
Copperopolis (1996)
Jubilee (1998)
then some live and archive material.
Mighty Joe Moon is the GLB album for me. I heart it.
You’re right Harold – was getting mixed up with Fuzzy which has the sublime Jupiter and teardrop which is my favourite GLB song.
Sort of agree….here’s an EP for you – ‘Jupiter…’ and ‘Dixie Drugstore’ off Fuzzy, ‘Truly Truly Truly’ and ‘Testimony’ of Jubilee. Rinse, repeat. I’d struggle to rank those 4 in my affections.
Also, where’s @huskerdude on this one…
Right with you @Harold Holt! Astonishing album – still have the C180 tape that I transferred it to and listened to non-stop every weekend on the National Express up to Pontefract in the 80s….guitar feedback, tape hiss, road noise. Up In The Air is an all time favourite.
Yeah – every single Bob Mould track on “Warehouse” is dynamite – sheer dynamite.
I did myself a tape where i just took the mould tracks from W:S&S. That was all killer, no filler as they say…
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.
I agree. Rain Tree Crow is magnificent.
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.
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.
Artists whose late work was/is as good as/better than anything they did before?
Johnny Cash
Ry Cooder
Leonard Cohen
David Bowie
Bettye Lavette
Mavis Staples
Bob Dylan.
I’M KIDDING.
He still gets eight or nine star reviews regardless.
Sadly, not out of 10
Uncut would never give ANYONE less than seven. So everything that isn’t at least nine probably means it’s crap.
Sparks! Best work has been done this century.
Can’t agree with Ry or Mavis Tigger. D
Mavis’s Only For The Lonely and Mahalia Jackson tribute were pretty good back in the day. Since the turn of the century, Have A Little Faith, We’ll Never Turn Back, You Are Not Alone, One True Vine and If All I Was Was Black are as good if not better. In fact, her latest could well be her best.
With Ry, his collaborations with ‘world’ artists are beyond compare, but, solo, Chavez Ravine, My Name Is Buddy, I, Flathead, Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down and Election Special are all consistently excellent. His collaboration with The Chieftains, San Patricio, is mighty fine, as is his last album with Hans Theessink and Terry Evans.
Both are artists who haven’t lost any of their creative juices late into their careers, @Junior-Wells.
From banging boomerangs, dum dum diddles and all that to the cold brilliance of the title track of their last album
The last truly great thing New Order did – Regret, from 1993. The rest of that album wasn’t great, and subsequent albums even less so. Crikey, I feel old.
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.
You’re not my nephew. The staff are stealing my things. There’s a draft in here.
That’ll be from the atrium, probably.
I always felt the Jam’s last 3 B-sides are among their best work
The Great Depression
Pity poor Alfie
Shopping
Love The Great Depression. Ridiculous that it was thrown away on a b-side when you think how patchy The Gift was.
Yeah me too, ‘The Great Depression’ and ‘Pity Poor Alfie’ are really good.
‘The Gift’ has some great stuff on it but I was thought the production sounded really thin and tinny, or a bit shiny or something. There must be a technical term for this, probably ‘shite’.
I often wonder what it must have been like to be Paul Weller at that time. All that creativity in just 5 years and he could still afford to ditch The Great Depression. We’ve not really seen the like before or sInce. Or have we……
I always forget how young he was. I was about 11 when I first got into The Jam and to me he seemed glamorously old. Heh.
Remarkable.
Even at 15 he seemed like a proper adult. What was he? 23 in 1982?
Yes, 23. Blimey.
I remember an article in Melody Maker as he was turning 20 and worried about whether he could be a legitimate voice for the young folk.
The cover version of Curtis Mayfield’s “Move on Up” on the Beat Surrender double EP is a very creditable effort as well, I think.
It is; I like the live version too. Oh man I loved that EP! It was one of my most treasured possessions age 13, bought on day of release.
I’d be willing to bet that they were doing Move On Up in 1975 in Woking. Ending up back where they started.