Bands with One Album That is Much Better Than the Others

[Alex]

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon. As much as I love a bunch of their catalog, this album is head and shoulders above the rest. I think it's the closest to being a perfect rock album there is.

Boston - Boston

The Cars - The Cars

Deep Purple - Machine Head

Bob Marley - Exodus

U2 - Achtung Baby

ZZ Top - Tres Hombres

what about the eagles?

Too '70s for me to know much about.

seems un-challenging enough to have made the cut though

[surfndestroy]

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon. As much as I love a bunch of their catalog, this album is head and shoulders above the rest. I think it's the closest to being a perfect rock album there is.

Boston - Boston

The Cars - The Cars

Deep Purple - Machine Head

Bob Marley - Exodus

U2 - Achtung Baby

ZZ Top - Tres Hombres

what about the eagles?

Too '70s for me to know much about.

seems un-challenging enough to have made the cut though

The whole topic is un-challenging. Besides with the Eagles I don't see a single album being that much better than the rest.

[mastaflatch]

Pink Floyd is one of those rare bands that became legendary partly because they've released a string of stellar albums. I'd consider Dark Side-->Wish You Were Here-->Animals-->The Wall to be all quite stellar. I mean, one could single out Abbey Road or Sgt Pepper for the Beatles or Highway 61 or Blonde on Blonde, etc.

[mastaflatch]

and I prefer Bob Marley's albums prior to Exodus.

[LetMeSleep]

This thread has its fair share of stupid. Very few bands mentioned belong in here. Take AIC. Dirt is their best work (imo) but it isn't he'd and shoulders above the rest. So they shouldn't be mentioned here. Any who brings U2 or Pink Floyd or Sabbath in here is missing the point.

[ridleybradout]

Any who brings U2 or Pink Floyd or Sabbath in here is missing the point.

Exactly.

A few UK bands from the mid-noughties, all of which are still going but have never come close to matching their excellent debuts.

Bloc Party
The Darkness
Kaiser Chiefs

[Norah]

This thread has its fair share of stupid. Very few bands mentioned belong in here. Take AIC. Dirt is their best work (imo) but it isn't he'd and shoulders above the rest. So they shouldn't be mentioned here. Any who brings U2 or Pink Floyd or Sabbath in here is missing the point.

I don't know. I think there are two types of bands that fit in here. Those that have a string of bad to mediocre album and one good to great one that really stands out, or a band with a bunch of good albums and one spectacular one that stands above everything else.

[bodysnatcher]

[nyquillyn]

No fucking way.

[epilogue]

It's weird, I don't think I listen to any bands that have one album that's far and away better than their others.

[epilogue]

No fucking way.

Yeah, not even.

[bodysnatcher]

Their other stuff (minus latest) is fine. Just not better, that's all.

[mastaflatch]

This thread has its fair share of stupid. Very few bands mentioned belong in here. Take AIC. Dirt is their best work (imo) but it isn't he'd and shoulders above the rest. So they shouldn't be mentioned here. Any who brings U2 or Pink Floyd or Sabbath in here is missing the point.

I don't know. I think there are two types of bands that fit in here. Those that have a string of bad to mediocre album and one good to great one that really stands out, or a band with a bunch of good albums and one spectacular one that stands above everything else.

Fair enough - I still think that Pink Floyd's DSOTM isn't that better than the 3 that followed. I wouldn't put OK Computer on such a pedestal either although I'm sure a lot of people would.

This album fits though:

[Kevin Davis]

None of the bands I am familiar with that have been listed thus far belong here -- certainly not Pink Floyd, AIC, or Bruce. The one I keep coming back to is "Illmatic," but even then I can't quite bring myself to write off some of Nas's other stuff. This is an interesting thread simply because it seems that if you interpret the thread as I did -- which is the same as how Spenno did, basically to mean an anomalous masterpiece amidst an otherwise disposable body of work -- there really isn't a good answer to the original question. I figured I would be able to come up with at least a dozen examples.

[stip]

I agree anyone who put out a whole string of critically acclaimed albums probably doesn't belong here. I withdraw my AIC suggestion and beg for the forgiveness of the thread

[Alex]

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon. As much as I love a bunch of their catalog, this album is head and shoulders above the rest. I think it's the closest to being a perfect rock album there is.

Boston - Boston

The Cars - The Cars

Deep Purple - Machine Head

Bob Marley - Exodus

U2 - Achtung Baby

ZZ Top - Tres Hombres

what about the eagles?

Too '70s for me to know much about.

seems un-challenging enough to have made the cut though

The whole topic is un-challenging. Besides with the Eagles I don't see a single album being that much better than the rest.

no, i meant that the music is un-challenging and rather bland

[Heathen]

None of the bands I am familiar with that have been listed thus far belong here -- certainly not Pink Floyd, AIC, or Bruce. The one I keep coming back to is "Illmatic," but even then I can't quite bring myself to write off some of Nas's other stuff. This is an interesting thread simply because it seems that if you interpret the thread as I did -- which is the same as how Spenno did, basically to mean an anomalous masterpiece amidst an otherwise disposable body of work -- there really isn't a good answer to the original question. I figured I would be able to come up with at least a dozen examples.

This isn't surprising as most people here seem to favor older, renowned, established artists, artists who obtained that status precisely by not having most of their work being disposable. I reckon there has to be exceptions (and maybe for the general public a band like Pearl Jam only has one truly great album and the rest is forgottable?) but for the most part if you want to find artists who fit that criteria you have to stray a bit further from the big names.

[Brett]

Good points all around in this last page. To me, Arcade Fire fits closer to Chud's definition of the thread purpose. While their other releases range from okay to good, none of them really match up to Funeral.

Heathen's point is pretty good, though I think it goes even deeper. It's not so much that it's established acts, it's that very few people here are going to pay much attention to an artist that only puts out one good or great album among a sea of duds, regardless of how well known they are. We're more likely to not care about the artist at all, even if that one album is good. An example that fits this particularly well for me is TV on the Radio. They had a really stellar debut with Desperate Youth, but then failed to put out anything else that appealed to me. Thus I have no real interest in the group. I'll still put that one record on from time to time, though.

[Kevin Davis]

Yeah, I can't fathom there aren't hundreds of exceptions. In addition to what you are saying, I think with widely recognizable artists it is easier to identify a sort of widespread "perception" of certain records, which helps steer the conversation away from just being a list of artists that people (meaning individuals) generally dislike but happened to produce one record that they can tolerate. I think the only interesting spin on this conversation almost has to involve a recognition of these more widespread perceptions, such that it looks at artists who really managed to make a splash -- not just commercially but also critically and/or culturally -- with one record but otherwise ultimately ceased to be relevant. Otherwise the thread just becomes a list of various artists' best albums, or what I described above.

What about Liz Phair?

[McParadigm]

I might say Clapton.

As much as I dig Five Live Yardbirds and a lot of his other 60's work, I just don't think anything he ever released was remotely on a level with Layla.