Quote:
Originally Posted by Lisnaholic
I suspect that "bands running out of ideas" happens more often than we may care to imagine, and may be the catalyst for the obligatory descent into drugs and booze. Lack of ideas may also be responsible for this syndrome, which maybe other people have noticed :-
After about three robust, original albums a band comes up with something that is over-subtle and over-thought. OK, it´s not always album number four, but I´m thinking that Steely Dan (with Royal Scam ), Kraftwerk (with everything after Autobahn ), Yes (Topographic Oceans) and Pink Floyd (Meddle) have all made this mistake. What is it with these bands, that suddenly they´re too sophisticated to produce anything as vulgar as a riff or hook line ?
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I can even bring an 80's Pop example that crashed and burned because of that. Missing Persons, filled with high-level talent, had one sharp New Wave Pop album in 1982, but after that things went south when they let the tech take over with their second album which ditched their immediate appeal. The single that announced the second album, "Give", was very bland in a way that you can hear the talent but miss the energy. I was not expecting another Spring Session M, but this was the case of trying too hard to prove the musicianship and slickness by focusing on being up to date with the instrument tech. This was a mega mistake a number of bands did in trying to "go serious" by throwing out the energy that caused many to take notice in the first place with some keeping some of the knack for hooks but filling a lot of spaces with over-serious aims especially in an 80's that was expanding on the tech and the media but losing the intensity. Mind, that approach led to a few "Cult Classics", but most of them were cut-out bin ready by the time of release, and the nature of listeners of Pop Bands lets them know in quick time when they lost the connection.