As a follow up to my previous article on dazzling debuts, I decided to capture some thoughts on some spectacular sophomore albums by my favorite artists. The “sophomore slump” is a well known adage in the music industry and refers to the likelihood that an emerging artist, who starts out strong with their debut release, will fumble their second. This is often the case with bands who may have a few years of work and refinement going into their debut, but then have to hustle with limited time and often lesser material for their followup. The pressures of meeting success with success can often leave an artist up against the wall when it comes to trying to make lightning strike twice. The more successful a debut, the more likely the “curse” will take hold. It’s a common pattern, especially in the heyday of the rock music business, once the album gained primacy in the late 1960s. That’s when the album became more than a collection of songs, but a statement in itself and was expected to hold together as a unified conception. Many fell short, but a few managed to not only surpass their debuts, but create something which would go on to be a defining statement and high water mark for their careers.
BLACK SABBATH - PARANOID
Black Sabbath may have invented “heavy metal” on their stunning 1969 eponymous debut LP, but they perfected it on its followup, 1970’s Paranoid. The title track alone could sustain the album in its heights, but the fact it was accompanied by such other classics as War Pigs, Iron Man, Fairies Wear Boots and the gear shifting, etherial Planet Caravan, secured this album as the peak of Sabbath’s career. There were more great albums and songs, but this one is so dense with concentrated brilliance that it can easily stand as the primary essential album from the band. The riffs, the hooks and the energy are all on point at every turn. When you think of Black Sabbath, it’s likely that this is the first music of theirs that comes to mind, with the possible exception of the title track from the debut album.
PENGUIN CAFE ORCHESTRA
Simon Jeffes’ Penguin Cafe Orchestra came out of the gates in 1976 with a debut album that somewhat awkwardly shifted between avant-garde experimentation and more folk inspired contemporary classical pieces. The combination was uneven and offered an inconsistent listening experience. By the time the project returned for it’s second outing in 1981, that confusion was gone and what took its place was a vision of crystal clarity. The most critical shift was that the experimentalism was now more a nuance to the proceedings than a raison d'être. There were still subtle hints of it, like the phone effects in Telephone and Rubber Band, but the folksy neoclassical song crafting became the true purpose and every compositions within the album encapsulated that aim from start to finish. Whereas the strangeness distracted on the first album, it highlighted and enhanced on the second, offering a tweaking of the sound in just the right way to set it off against the musicality of the proceedings. Two further studio albums would follow over the years before Jeffes passed, but the striking perfection of that second album remained a high bar which the other albums, though valiant efforts, couldn’t exceed.
ELVIS COSTELLO - THIS YEAR’S MODEL
Elvis Costello’s debut release managed to show off his song writing skills, but the lacklustre production on the album left it sounding more like a pub rock demo session than a fully crafted harbinger of the “new wave” coming along in tandem with the “punk” scene. There were great songs there but it all sounded thin and tinny. Those flaws would be firmly dealt with on his next album, This Year’s Model, where the production and performances were as tight and punchy as Costello’s song writing. Elvis’ aim may have been true on the previous release, but his method was not supported by the folks capturing him on tape. For the second round, however, he glares out at the listen from the cover, camera at the ready and you know he means business this time around. It’s an album that runs lean and doesn’t dither with unnecessary elements. It’s all cut and trimmed to maximum leanness and every song serves up a bite and a jab that hits the bullseye without fail. It also has a style to it that is clearly modern in its references, even when they lean into 60’s nostalgia. The “pub” aesthetic is gone and he’s pushing squarely into the future. His next effort, Armed Forces, would continue with this precision and perfection, nearly equaling its predecessor and, some may argue, exceeding it. Beyond these two records, for my tastes, Costello was never more compelling nor engaging.
TUBEWAY ARMY / GARY NUMAN - REPLICAS
Tubeway Army was, for all practical purposes, Gary Numan, so I look at his solo catalogue as inclusive of their two releases. Their eponymous debut album was solid and veers heavily into the direction he’d go on later LPs, but it was not quite fully fleshed out. The synthesizer there was no more than a novelty accent and the sound was still dominated by guitars. It was the second album where the fusion of man and machine, synthesizer and rock ’n roll, achieved it’s ideal balance. With Replicas, Numan morphed into the “sad android” persona which informed songs such as Are 'Friends' Electric? and Down In The Park. The cover features poor, lonely Gary-bot doing his best Kraftwerk impression, though his music had more pathos and emotion than the iconoclastic and highly stylized Germans. But in comparison, Kraftwerk were mature, experienced robots by the time Replicas came out, whereas Gary was barely beyond adolescence, which provides a great deal of the charm of this album. His naivety makes him approachable and likeable instead of pretentious and that’s what grants this album its apex position in his catalogue. By the time the 3rd album came around, Tubeway Army was discharged and Gary went corporate, complete with mega hit, Cars, as he became a marketing expert with The Pleasure Principal. It’s an exceptional record, but the contrivances of it are more studied and less inspired and novel than Replicas. It was a refinement in terms of eliminating guitars in favour of synths, but basically more of what Replicas had already established. Beyond these albums, things never surpassed the creative freshness of Replicas and its distinctive iconography.
THE RAINCOATS - ODYSHAPE
While most UK punk tended to follow the stencil of primal block chord thrashing, the post-punk scene, which seeped from under its floorboards, produced some notable forays into truly original and inspired new music. Percolating up as a tangent from the all girl Slits, The Raincoats, briefly borrowing their drummer, Palmolive, would become one of the most infamous groups from the era. They didn’t make a significant impact at the time, but their legacy and influence would grow exponentially over the decades as the likes of Kurt Cobain cited them as influences and their reissued records came to new ears. Their first album clearly showed the promise they had to offer, but their second album, Odyshape, fully exploited their idiosyncratic vision.
Combining the atmosphere of dub inspired aesthetics with continental and Celtic folk influences, Odyshape took their sound into a kind of asymmetrical structure which could often invoke the kind of eccentric naivety of The Shaggs, though with the benefit of actual musical virtuosity. There’s a raw intimacy to these songs which is distinctly and unapologetically feminine in nature, entirely eschewing the swagger of masculine rock tropes in favour of a “girl power” that could rage just as savagely. A song like the title track explores the idea of body image and unrealistic expectations of the media in a way that was years ahead of the feminist trends of the current century. These girls were doing it for themselves in a way that subsequent generations would later have to play catch-up to equal. While their third and final studio album would offer another solid set of exceptional material, it veered into slightly more traditional song structures, which for me, gives Odyshape the edge over their other two albums, simply by virtue of its originality.
NEW ORDER - POWER, CORRUPTION AND LIES
In the wake of Ian Curtis’ suicide, it’s something of a minor miracle that the remaining band members managed to regroup and soldier on. And while their debut as New Order offered up some brilliant work, it also laboured under the shadow of the tragedy they’d survived. Every groove in Movement is saturated with a sense of loss and remorse. It was all a rather intense, brooding affair. But their next releases would break through the gloom and emerge with a sound that was not only free of the spectre of death, but was a celebration of life and living, even at its most painful. The double whammy of both the single, Blue Monday, and the album, Power Corruption and Lies, burst onto the music scene of the early 1980s with such vim and vigour that they changed the vibe on the underground dance floors in a paradigm shifting manner. They created the link between the rawness of punk and the sophistication of electronic music, creating a dynamic which would influence dance music for decades going forward. These releases were so potent that the group never managed to surpass them in terms of influence and cohesion.
CAN - TAGO MAGO
While 1971’s Tago Mago may have come as CAN’s third album release, it more properly represents their true 2nd album. Monster Movie was their first, released in 1969, followed by Soundtracks in 1970, but this second release was in fact a collection of disparate, unrelated compositions created for various film projects in the preceding couple of years and, therefore, does not represent a creatively coherent effort by the band (though the album still holds together quite nicely). Tago Mago, on the other hand, was the group coming together with new vocalist, Damo Suzuki (replacing Malcolm Moonie) to craft an epic double LP’s worth of music specifically conceived to function as their true sophomore release. Even the notation on the back of Soundtracks stated this fact. “’Can Soundtracks’ is the second album of The Can but not album no. two.”
Tago Mago thus contains the sum of their creative evolution to that point, rendered through a series of sometimes monumental improvisational excursions, intercut and rearranged using Holger’s emerging mastery of tape editing and production. Side long epics like Halleluwah brought their thundering groove to the forefront while Aumgn took them into the farthest reaches of abstract dissolution and atmosphere. In between, shorter tracks like Paperhouse and Mushroom brought them into a tighter focus and showed their ability to function within a more concise framework. Taken together, it’s music of a completely singular nature, unlike anything any contemporary of their time was able to muster. That’s something of an accomplishment given the company they were keeping in Germany at the time. To be able to stand above the heads of giants like Kraftwerk, Neu! or Cluster is no mean feat. Tago Mago’s greatness is in its scale and breadth, something that was only possible when allowed to sprawl over two slabs of vinyl. CAN released a lot of other great music, but they never took the luxury to let it get this expansive again.
QUEEN II
Of course there’s all sorts of arguments to be made for later albums being the peak of Queen’s creative accomplishments. Certainly A Night at the Opera is an obvious choice, but there’s an old saying amongst Queen fans that you can tell the true diehards because they’ll always pick Queen II as their favorite. While other albums may feature more refined song craft & production, there’s still something about that second album that hardcore fans recognize and cherish. There’s a heaviness about it that would never be seen again on any other album, a kind of darkness and a sense of epic drama which brings you into some fantastical and imposing landscapes, complete with battling ogres and deathbed kings. There’s also that stunning cover photo by Mick Rock, which has become the most iconic image of the band to date. Revived for the Bohemian Rhapsody video, it was seared into the minds of Queen fans decades ago and remains their most recognizable avatar. The split between the “black” and “white” sides of the album also helps to give it a conceptual framework that you don’t find on any other album. As a result, it’s the place the true fan of the band will always find them preserved in their most intense and dynamic incarnation. When you see some of the live footage of them from this period, encased and compressed like diamonds in those smaller venues, the hardness of their rocking is undeniable. Subsequent albums would lighten the mood considerably, so this is the place to go for the uncut jewels.
PSYCHIC TV - DREAMS LESS SWEET
After the “termination” of Throbbing Grislte’s “mission”, Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson teamed up with Alex Fergusson to form the core of the first incarnation of Psychic TV. This central triad, along with a revolving ensemble of guests and a bit of help from a few professional studio musicians, would create two landmark albums before the configuration changed and moved the project in other directions. The PTV debut, Force the Hand of Chance, set a stunning change of course after the gritty industrial grind of TG, opting instead for clarity and precision and professionalism. We get pretty folk music, mutant funk/disco, spaghetti western vistas and motivational commercials on the first album, smashing any preconceptions anyone could have had for what these “wreckers of civilization” might be capable of. But the first album, as magnificent as it is, was only the warmup for what would come next.
Dreams Less Sweet is one of the most complex conceptual artifacts ever produced by a group purporting to operate in any proximity to “pop” music. Every facet and detail contained in every element of it has been meticulously calculated to reinforce the thematic content being exacted upon the listener, on both a conscious and subconscious level. Each piece is carefully structured to flow into the next with seamless fluidity. Each component of the packaging is insidiously contrived to ingrain its subtext upon the unsuspecting consumer. While the first album offered up its varied excursions in a somewhat discrete, segmented arrangement, Dreams Less Sweet made distinctions between pieces and movements seem indiscernible. Taking a cue from Kraftwerk’s Autobahn by beginning the album with the sound of a car door closing, the journey then takes a sharp detour off the main roads and into a cavernous spelunking of mystical undergrowth. Even when it’s manipulating you into feeling like it wants to be beautiful, it’s surreptitiously insinuating something dire and sadistic, from the phallic pierced flower on the cover to the “Christmas” song that takes its lyrics from the final mass suicide speech of Jim Jones. You can’t take anything here at face value and the album seduces you into unravelling its mysteries with each listen. Through all its other incarnations and some other very fine records, Psychic TV never managed to outdo the rich complexity of Dreams Less Sweat.
PUBLIC IMAGE LTD. - METAL BOX / SECOND EDITION
The debut of John Lydon’s post Sex Pistols reinvention was something which was fraught with impossible expectations and unreasonable judgements from the press. They were looking to chew him to bits and, in many ways, their first album was just the fodder on which they wanted to stomp(f). While the debut single from the album got people excited and anticipatory, the sheer uncompromising quarrelsomeness of the rest of the album meant that it was doomed to being a somewhat uneven affair. Some tracks were well produced and benefitted from reputable studio resources while others were slapped together after the money ran out and they “only wanted to finish the album with a minimum amount of effort.” It’s got flashes of brilliance, but also splashes of precocious self-indulgence which often only half-work, depending on your preferences and patience.
When it came time to do the next album, however, even with many of those indulgences still in high gear, PiL managed to find themselves in the middle of a creative epiphany the likes of which few bands ever get to enjoy. Some kind of magic happened amid all the chaos and substance abuse and it all coalesced around their concept of dystopian dance music driven by thundering subterranean bass and splattered with atonal shards of guitars and vocals. In their fusion of dub, Krautrock and Beefheart style jaggedness, PiL had stumbled onto a recipe for a kind of music that was uniquely suited for the dismal realities of urban living in the looming decadence of the 1980s.
While their next album, Flowers of Romance, struck out in a very different, yet equally bold new direction and certainly sustains its own relevance, it simply can’t compete with the monolithic presence of that metal canister and, at almost half the running time, its sweeping landscape. No other record from Pil, in any variant, ever came close to equaling the impact of those first three albums with the clear pinnacle remaining that transcendent triple threat of 12” EPs which was Metal Box.
