The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / Their most famous album isn’t their best

Their most famous album isn’t their best

by 245 Comments

Looked at from a distance, a recording artist’s output is distinguished by the most well-known songs, the albums which are seen as pivotal in musical history, or as archetypes of a certain genre. (Best albums of all time, etc).

As you get closer to the discography, it becomes a bit more complicated. LPs that got (over) praised on their release might have novelty on their side, but don’t stand up to repeated listening as the internal coherence of the tracks is not so evident as on other less prominent releases.

In the pinned article, Darran Anderson articulates something possibly heretical that I have long thought. Primal Scream’s best album is Vanishing Point.

Screamadelica is like Sergeant Pepper – groundbreaking, but not better than the sum of its parts. Vanishing Point is a far more satisfying and coherent album, particularly with Echo Dek as a coda, as the author suggests. Don’t get me wrong. I love listening to individual songs from Screamadelica – there isn’t a bad song on there – some are my favourite of all time. But they are just so different from each other that their effect is negated by the proximity. I’m listening to Vanishing Point right now, and the songs flow into each other beautifully – individual, but sharing a feel, a coherence that is far from the jumpcuts of Screamadelica.

Be my guest, if you want to jump in on this or any other artist’s canonical/best albums, (I’d be intrigued to learn more about hidden gems that I haven’t heard before, or overlooked).

To stir the pot a bit more, and as I’m in confessional mode, I’ll admit that I prefer Common One to Astral Weeks, Adventure to Marquee Moon. Get Close is my favourite album by The Pretenders, Help by The Beatles, The Caution Horses by Cowboy Junkies.

https://thequietus.com/articles/31772-primal-scream-vanishing-point

0

Comments

  1. INXS: Listen Like Thieves is a better album than Kick (which has the big hit singles).

    Metallica: Master of Puppets is better than the black album.

    Stay tuned for others.

  2. Making movies is much better than Brothers in Arms even with Les Boys.
    Honey Pokey is better than Bright Lights.
    Grace and Danger is better than Solid Air.
    Can’t buy a thrill is better than Aja.

    • Ooh! Controversial. I had a feeling someone might say that, XRMNTR (and Evil Heat) have their moments, but I mainly remember them as being very loud. I listen to Loop when I want noise. I prefer a bit of dub in the mix.

      But I will go away and give the album another listen. I might be persuaded.

      • Nah, you won’t be. But then I agreed with the original post, Vanishing Point is much more enjoyable than Screamadelica. The latter is a bit too repetitive in some of it’s more dancey moments.

      • You want controversial – I always believed that Give Out But Don’t Give Up was their best
        (a belief I think confirmed by the recent “what could/should’ve been” Original Memphis Recordings)

        • Good for you – honest to goodness Stones mimicry. It does make me wonder why it takes a ´Director´s Cut´ version to reveal the best album. If it was that good, why wasn`t that the version released?

          Yer man what wrote the Quetus article referenced the GOBDGU album as a postcard back to the fans – they weren`t really transported to Memphis like what the band were, I would like to hear the Demodelica version of the previous album, but similarly, it is the album itself that should amaze and astound, not the outtakes.

          Incidentally, I have listened to XTRMNTR again, and it’s OK. Loud and full of Bobby`s vocals, with the bass low in the mix. It´s what I imagine would be the best Primal Scream album if I had done some speed and was in some Glaswegian nightclub past midnight deep in a jumping, swaying mosh of clubbers, the walls and roof and floor slick with sweat and reverberating with sound. But why go to Primal Scream for that, when Suicide and early Sisters already have that covered?

          No, what I want for Primal Scream is all their musical and cultural influences thrown into the mix and then expertly played and highlighted in the service of astounding soundscapes. That=s what I get from Vanishing Point.

              • Here’s a chain for yers:

                Velocity Girl -> Made of Stone -> Love Spreads -> Kowalski.

                ….you can probably then link from Kowalksi to something on Golden Greats (which is also the album Second Coming should have been)

                    • That´s new on me. Must have been fun to record and play. Great little squeam, I mean scene.

                      Back to your chain, Made Of Stone to Love Spreads? Sure, if you want Stoneus Quoses. Far too much guitar in the mix. They were best as a dance band with dabs of guitar – bass and drums to the fore with teaspoons of guitar and microdots of vocals.

                    • Okay, the only connection between Stone and Spreads is the Roses themselves. But the bassline of Spreads is similiar to the one in Kowalski. I’m sure someone’s done what the young folk call a “mash up” but I prefer the one in my head.

                      There are apparently similarities between the videos for Loaded and She Bangs the Drums but I’ve never seen either of them.

                    • Isn’t the bassline of Kowalski a George Clinton creation? He sometimes used to pop up on the GOBDGU tour.

                      Edit: Funkadelic’s Get Off Your Ass and Jam

                    • The bass in Love Spreads is buried so deep I can hardly hear it. I´ll throw it in the mash up machine and see what gets thrown out. Meanwhile – here´s one I made earlier –

                      Blood Money by both Primal Scream and The Sisters of Mercy. A meeting of minds you might say. Probably wouldn´t, and probably won´t click to hear the glorious cacophony I have created
                      https://rave.dj/QL3fNhTBP3bALg

                      I’ve caught the edit in time to throw in the Stone Scream / Kowalski Spreads megamix. I promise you, it is a marked improvement on the Roses original
                      https://rave.dj/iUFO5-02S78cGQ

          • They made a great documentary about The Memphis Sessions which (kind of) explains why it wasn’t released as it was. I think they lost their nerve a bit and decided that the record wasn’t “contemporary” enough for the mid-90s. Therefore, ‘Rocks’, ‘Jailbird’, ‘Call on Me’ &’Big Jet Plane’ were remixed and they added ‘Funky Jam’, ‘Struttin’ & the George Clinton track. Not sure what they did to ‘Free’, however, the version on The Memphis Sessions is vastly superior.

        • I used to see them quite a lot, starting with the Primal Scream album (in a pub with fewer than 100 others), Screamadelica (Corn Exchange, Universities) and GOBDGU (Brixton Academy, etc) and, live, Rigid is right – the GOBDGU tour was amazing. But the drugs started to take over them during/after that.

    • I always thought the best Scream album wasn’t even an album at all: the Dixie Narco EP. It was brilliant, and I thought they should have done more in that style. Kinda ghostly soul music, like Moonlight Mile crossed with David Axelrod. After that I was really excited for their follow up, but my hopes were dashed!

      • I´ve got that 12″ somewhere. It´s really good. I think I heard it after the 2 Higher Than The Sun tracks from Screamadelica, so associated it with that general upbeat, airy feel,

        • ‘Screamadelica’ (the song) is an amazing tune. One of the best things they have ever done. They actually played it at their recent Glasgow gig, however, it lost a bit of impact when played live.

          • I remember playing it when DJing between bands at a gig in Cambridge. Someone in the audience came and asked me to change the track as it was, and I quote, “f***ing with my head” – result!

  4. I am going to get slated for all of these, but what the hell.

    The best R.E.M. album & the one I always go back to is Around The Sun. There are no ‘big’ tracks on it & it is very understated, but as a complete album I think it is superb.

    It is the same for Depeche Mode with Delta Machine too. Nothing particular standout, but a superb album.

    The Fall hit their absolute peak with Middle Class Revolt in my opinion.

    For Nick Cave & The Bad Seed it’s Push The Sky Away

    *puts on tin hat*

      • Out of Time has a fair bit of filler, but Automatic is indeed their best. Monster makes a decent EP.

        Around the Sun? That has to be a joke. It’s their worst, at least up to that point.

          • I was thinking I was going crazy then and had to rub my eyes and start again. To my ears Life’s Rich Pageant romps home as their greatest album, with Reckoning second best by some distance too, which is praise indeed when there are albums as good as Murmur, Green, Out of Time, Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi to consider.

            About 20 years or so ago they played a few nights at Brixton Academy, where they announced that they were choosing an album each night and playing 5 of the lesser played tracks from it. The night we went, after first laughing at the wife’s observation about the support act, Mull Historical Society (“I thought you said he played everything himself. He’s got a full band on stage” “Yes darling, but what were you expecting when he does a live show?! For him to come out kitted up as a one-man band?!?”), I was very pleased to hear Michael Stipe inform us we had turned up on Life’s Rich Pageant night. My mate had been hoping for Begin the Begin, whereas I wanted I Believe and Cuyahoga, and they did all 3. I think it was that show where they did Carnival of Sorts for the first time in about 20 years too. Definitely my favourite REM gig.

  5. To start with, I agree with the OP – Vanishing Point leaves Screamadelica in the dust.

    Also:
    Inside Out is better than Solid Air
    Katy Lied is better than Aja
    Starless and Bible Black is better than ITCOTKC
    Relayer is better than The Yes Album
    Gazeuse! is better than most of The Flying Teapot Trilogy
    Godbluff/Still Life (lumped together as they were written/recorded at the same time) is better than Pawn Hearts

  7. I don’t know what album is seen as Neil Young’s ‘best’ – After the Gold Rush, Harvest, Rust Never Sleeps or one of the Doom Trilogy perhaps – but none of them is as good as his definitive album: Zuma.

  9. I’m with you on Get Close as the best Pretenders album

    I’ll add Wish You Were Here is better than Dark Side Of The Moon and on the Dire Straist front it’s Love Over Gold (not Making Movies) that’s better than Brothers In Arms

  10. Meat is Murder is slightly better than The Queen is Dead

    The best Pixies album is still Surfer Rosa, not Doolittle.

    Portishead’ s Third may be their real masterwork, even more than Dummy.

    We Love Life is the best Pulp album, although hardly anyone remembers it.

  14. There are at least 3 * Dylan albums better than Blonde On Blonde

    * Bring It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisted and Blood On The Tracks.
    John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline also in with a shout

    (Cat well and truly among the pigeons)

  15. I prefer Zooropa to Achtung Baby. And just for good measure I prefer Rattle and Hum to The Joshua Tree. I think in both cases U2 just loosened up after the pressure of a major release, and both follow ups demonstrate a laid back confidence.

    Kate Bush’s best album I think is Aerial.

        • As much as I try, I just cannot get A Sky of Honey to stick in the brain. I’ve listened to Aerial a lot, but I’m still not sure I could name any of the tracks that make up A Sky of Honey. It’s fine, but lacks that certain something. Or maybe my memory is just shot to pieces, which might explain a lot.

          The Ninth Wave, on the other hand, is almost perfect (The Morning Fog lets the side down as it’s not quite 10/10 for me). Maybe it has a better concept – a shipwreck survivor is inherently more interesting than, erm, a sunny day – and maybe the combination of music, lyrics, sound effects, etc., is just more appealing. It also features Hello Earth, which for my money is one of the best things Kate has ever done.

          Hounds of Love, like Depeche Mode’s Violator, is one of those cases where the artist’s biggest album is also their best.

          • Sunset, Somewhere In Between and Aerial Itself immediately spring to mind. I’m not making a case for ASOH being better than TNW, as I said. I agree about Hello Earth, but not The Morning Fog – that was already one of my favourite songs and was my personal highlight of the Before The Dawn show, enhanced as it was by the gorgeous acoustic arrangement.

        • I don’t find it easy to articulate why I like this one so much more than the others. To me, it’s their only album that is just what it is, a collection of great songs. I found with their other albums that they were trying too hard to push an image and create their own mythology. Zooropa seemed to come out without the usual fanfare, a bit like Pet Shop Boys’ Disco, and it has a much looser feel. So I don’t really consider Zooropa as part of their main body of work. I see it as more experimental, as if it were a side project, like the Passengers album.

    • Does the figure for SMS relate to the original album or the 21stC CD? completely different albums.

      My favourite is Buildings & Food but i do have a lot of affection for TS. It was the first new TH album I bought. £5.49 in Pride Records in Grimsby. I’d actually gone in for The Name of This Band…. but they didn’t have it.

      Cool story, huh?

      PS. Tiggs I realise that you and I have exactly the same exchange about Talking Heads every eighteen months or so. Always a pleasure, never a chore, and facts don’t stain the furniture.

      • I remember the original Stop Making Sense album hanging around in the charts for many many weeks. Previous albums were more straight in and out, it was clearly their biggest seller up to that point.

        • It’s a funny thing, the original album had all sorts of overdubs on it and I thought it was awful and a total travesty. Then later the reissued CD was pretty much a straight repro of the music in the film and yet I find it curiously lifeless. It goes to show that the excitement of SMS is partly in the visuals. I mean you can’t hear the suit flapping on the CD….

          When they put out their best-of in 1992 I thought it was going to be huge. It wasn’t. They’d gone out of fashion.

    • Little Creatures is my favourite Talking Heads album! Possibly because it was the first I bought, but my opinion hasn’t changed since I got to know the others. Although True Stories is only a couple of duff songs away from beating it. Some great stuff on True Stories.

    • Fear Of Music is the one for me.
      Curious because they definitely were not at their ‘peak’ yet – Remain In Light is clearly a development on, & has hits but I just never really cared for it.
      I also love Little Creatures & Stop Making Sense ( which has great versions of FOM tracks) but nothing they did ever did grabbed me in the same way.

        • Trouble is, I’ve got used to the 2004 expanded edition which bucks the trend of such projects by actually being better for there being more of it.

          Let’s face it, things that get extended rarely last beyond the initial burst of excitement… er…

          • If that’s the CD, it’s a con. While it includes more tracks it truncates Crosseyed and Painless, thereby depriving the listener of perhaps the most exhilarating moment in recorded music – the moment when the groovy slow intro kicks straight into the mighty main groove. It gets me every time.

            • Yes, that’s the fly in the ointment – quite an outrageous edit, like taking the big chord off the end of Day in the Life. There was a promo CD release in the 80s that included about an hours’ worth of the tracks from the original 2LP set, with that track included in full.

  23. Honky Château?
    Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player?
    Goodbye Yellow Brick Road?
    Caribou?
    Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy?

    All contenders surely, but the correct answer is … Songs from the West Coast

  24. Marillion: Fugazi is better than Misplaced Childhood (probably their best known) and Clutching at Straws (their biggest seller, I was surprised to learn today).

    MC might have the big hits, but Fugazi opens with the storming Assassing, which was always huge live, and finishes with the powerful double bill of Incubus (in my top 5) and the title track. Other than Jigsaw, which I’ve never taken to but a lot of Marillion fans love, it’s a belter.

    By the way, for those who might not have stayed the course, the latest album, An Hour Before It’s Dark, is a great piece of work.

    • Oh yes! Sign me up for the Fugazi fanclub.

      Son watches father scan obituary columns
      In search of absent school friends
      While his generation digest high fibre ignorance
      Cowering behind curtains and the taped-up painted windows

      I ask you “Where are the prophets? Where are the visionaries? Where are the poets? To breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary”

    • I reacquainted myself with the Fish era Marillion albums last year, after buying their excellent special edition sets. It’s a close call between Fugazi and Misplaced Childhood for me, and I’ve wavered between the two of them over the years. Fugazi at the moment, but it will change. Had they put Freaks on Misplaced Childhood it would have tipped the scales. It’s my favourite Marillion track. It got us kicked out of a pub in Barnsley back in the day though, when my mate put it on 6 times in a row on the jukebox.

      We seemed to find it quite easy to get kicked out of that particular pub though. We once got kicked out for claiming that the money on the pool table was ours, when we’d been the only people to set foot in the pool room for an hour before this big bloke came in and decided it was all his. I reckon on that occasion the landlord was doing us a favour though, cos the bloke was very big and angry, and rather insistent the small pile of 10p pieces were his. By the time we were marched out we had all decided to agree with him.

      • I never liked Marillion but I remember putting at least one of their songs on a lot in the pub. It was because I had a hopeless love for the barmaid who liked that track, ah … Sandra

        • When me and my mates first started going out, we’d always stick on the longest songs we liked. There was one pub where, without fail, our three songs would be Shine On You Crazy Diamond, The Stranglers’ Walk On By and The Doors’ The End. Us Yorkshiremen are even tight with our jukebox money!

          • Of all the loutish and wasteful behaviour for which the Bullingdon Club were notorious, the worst was going in a pub and programming three and half hours of the You Suffer / Mega Armageddon Death single.

            • Ha! Our local caf had a fancy video jukebox and one of us would always put on Boogie Wonderland. Tuuuune! Of course and colourful performance video, but mainly, I think, cos it was the longest decent song on there..

  26. It’s time to look at the claims of those two 1974 baroque pop masterworks.

    Sheer Heart Attack remains the Gentleman’s Choice for Queen. A Night at the Opera is more famous, but apart from ’39, Brian was not on top form. Let’s just be kind and say that Sweet Lady and The Prophet’s Song are no Brighton Rock and Now I’m Here.

    Kimono My House, on the other hand, has lost its crown. This is hardly surprising, given just how good the Mael brothers have been this century. The usurper of course is L’il Beethoven, the greatest album of the 21st century that never gets mentioned on those lists of the greatest albums of the 21st century.

  27. I think »Lumpy Gravy« is better than »Hot Rats«

    I think »Ting« is better than »In The Dutch Mountains«

    I think »Undermind« is better than »Billy Breathes«

    I think »Eskimo« is better than »Not Available«

  28. Late seventies British ska revival bands imperial phase LPs? IMO

    The Specials: More Specials is better than Specials.
    Madness: Absolutely is better than One Step Beyond.
    The Beat: Special Beat Service is better than I Just Can’t Stop It.
    The Selecter: Celebrate The Bullet is better than Too Much Pressure.
    Bad Manners: Gosh It’s… is better than Ska’N’B.

    • I agree with More Specials, which I think is a lot of fun and very underrated.

      As for Madness, I think Rise and Fall and Keep Moving are better than both One Step Beyond and Absolutely. Is there a consensus on the best Madness album?

      • Rise and Fall and Keep Moving are certainly lyrically more interesting albums but a have a wee bit more filler than Absolutely. They’re also quite different to OSB and Absolutely in tone and style which makes these sort of comparisons a bit pointless.

        The Liberty Of Norton Folgate is their finest album, I reckon.

        • I would put both Mad Not Mad and Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da ahead of One Step Beyond. It’s interesting for me that the albums they made once the singles dried up are actually better as albums then the ones with the singles on them.

          • They certainly became more assured as an albums band after their imperial eighties phase, but there’s so much to enjoy in those early LPs too. I do miss the youthful vigour and the old Langer & Winstanley taut production. They can get a bit fiddly. This extra track on 2012’s Oui Oui… is the closest they’ve got returning to their old Nutty sound.

  29. Then you have ‘popularity’ fatigue.
    Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours one of biggest selling albums ever yet of that era I much prefer Tusk or even Tango in the Night despite Rumours having a number of undisputed classics.

    • I can totally understand the appeal of Tusk, it’s got some fantastic songs and even the weaker tunes are interesting. I’ve never ‘got’ Tango In The Night though. I find it too polished, very bland and very 80’s sounding.
      (Rumours I think is just perfect from beginning to end, spoilt only by over-familiarity.)

      • I remember Lindsey Buckingham saying that an issue Tusk had was, becuase his songs were so different than those of Nicks and McVie, it sounds like a AOR album with a scratchy New Wave album trying to break through between the tracks. You can see what he means, though I do think it’s a good album.

        I understand the Rumours fatigue, but I think the remedy is to pluck out a song at a time. Gold Dust Woman, for example, still sounds fresh when you take it out of the context of the album.

        • “a AOR album with a scratchy New Wave album trying to break through” is an excellent description. And exactly what makes it work for me.
          I don’t agree with talk on this thread about Primal Scream. Much as I love the Memphis GOBDGU, I think the Screamadelica album is the bees knees (and Screamedelica the song would fit on it perfectly). And in some ways it’s the totally unexpected acoustic ballad Damaged that really makes the album special, contrasting wonderfully with the vibe of the album. Buckingham’s surprising “cardboard box for percussion” songs give Tusk a similar level of interesting contrast.

          Rumours is an album I always enjoy revisiting as a whole after a long break. It’s a particular favourite of both mine and Mrs Lodestone’s.

        • That is a very good summary of what makes Tusk work as it does. Buckingham’s songs are so different to Nicks’ and McVie’s but the mix of the three makes for a much better album. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Stevie Nicks’ songs are among the best that she has written and that Over And Over is one of the all time great Side 1 Track 1 songs.

    • I get popularity fatigue even if I haven’t heard an album for years.

      Abbey Road, say, is the one Liam Gallagher would lump on… hmm, do I want to be associated with Liam Gallagher?
      Hmm, I do not.
      It’s straight on with A Hard Day’s Night or Beatles For Sale.
      If the great unwashed are on it, it’s time to get off.

      I can’t think for one act (exception: Pet Sounds, as mentioned above) where this isn’t the case. Even then, right now I’m listening to Surfer Girl… and I never listen to big act compilations.

  30. Sometimes it’s a live album I favour, or a compilation (different material to album tracks). The Smiths have examples of the latter. I am a Hatful man. Also New Order Substance. Live At Leeds I would prefer Who-wise. The Name Of This Band Is Called Talking Heads could be the best of that band’s. At least the Remain In Light versions are better than the original. More Songs probably swings it though. I once had a tape of a Heads concert with Adrian Belew in full flood. That was probably their best ever album. Somebody borrowed it and it broke. In my head it lives on as the best ever recording that has existed of anyone. Obv not official product. Sometimes the best music never quite got captured.

    • I think the Rome versions, brilliant as they are, are slightly inferior to the Disc 2 of The Name of this Band… (vinyl of course for the full intro to Crosseyed and Painless) for two reasons – I think they are later versions and therefore more fluid and there are two female backing vocalists that work better. It’s all subjective of course. I’ve a bootleg CD of that line up at home. I must give it a blast to see how it matches up.

  31. A bit of cross threadage but I imagine Labour Of Love is the best known UB40 album but bugger me it can’t be as good as Signing Off. Where has it been all my life? I can’t stop listening to it. Tyler, King, Madame Medusa all brilliant songs ful of story and rhythm and a real feeling that I find hard to describe. Blimey it’s good

  32. XTC is a tricky one because some say Skylarking is their best, others, Black Sea or English Settlement or even Apple Venus.

    And what would Squeeze’s be to the layperson, Cool For Cats? I vote for East Side Story.

  33. Is this the right thread? So John Peel then …

    Supertramp . Arguably Breakfast in America the one that cracked it for them but Crime Of the Century is their artistic pinnacle.

  34. Arguably Back in the DHSS is the only Half Man Half Biscuit album that any non fan has heard of. It’s not their best. That would be Cammell Laird Social Club.

  35. I don’t think anyone has mentioned Springsteen have they? Born in the USA must be his most famous, but it certainly isn’t his best. I would put Tunnel of Love and Darkness ahead of it for starters.

      • Next week on Mrs Brown’s Boys…

        Mrs B : “now whit’s that Trio single called..?”
        Daughter : “Da Da Da”
        Da : “That’s me name, don’t wear it out, now!”

        Krakatoa-rivalling laugh from pissed up studio audience.

Leave a Reply