Terrific album... but certainly not as good as "Murmur" and probably not as good as "Reckoning" or "Green."

Huge hit with The Joshua tree, which is a fine album but not as good as The Unforgettable Fire

Genesis (at least in terms of the hit parade)
Elbow (first album is the best, my opinion only)
Labi Siffre (much of the 70s stuff far better than that "So Strong" business)
Aphex Twin (work completed when 15 far better than work completed since 18)

I remember thinking his first, 'A Century Ends' (at the time of its release), was very powerful and very out of kilter with the times - a-fashionable, if that's a word (well, it is now!). He REALLY meant what he had to say and he had a remarkable facility with words and metaphors - and seeing him play in pubs to small but always enthused crowds was very exciting. I was lucky enough, living in Ireland, to be among a population who 'got' him almost instantly - I really couldn't understand why it took years and 4 albums for anyone in the UK to listen (and I'm really talking about the UK media here, as the arbiters/gatekeepers of taste in the pre internet era). I thought 'White Ladder', the big breakthrough, was okay, but much prefered the one after. But he'll never be able to conjure the same sparse, hungry, life-depends-on-this magic as he did with his first album - if only because he's not that guy, with that guy's pressures of life any more. Sometimes something worth the angst does come out of a bedsit. (But not often!)

was only introduced to Jeff Buckley by Hallelujah last year. The Sin-E albums were infinitely better

the ones just before the breakthru'. And the worst the ones just after?
I am not going to give examples, that's your job!

Perfect example of Retro's theory above.

To wit:

Sons & Fascination/Sister Feelings Call - excellent set, their best work.

New Gold Dream - the huge breakthrough, good but not great

Sparkle in the Rain - unmitigated shite.

Urban Hymns blah blah blah - give me A Northern Soul any day of the week - the memory of driving down through the South of France, the entire car singing 'I wanna die alone in bed' will never fade!

As great as "Purple Rain" may be, my personal favourites of his are "Parade", and "The Black Album" ("Sign O The Times" is, for me, rather overrated).

As someone who has eagerly wolfed down every Paul Weller album since All Mod Cons, some with a bigger pinch of salt than others, I don’t really understand why Stanley Road towers over every other album before or since in his sales graph. Except that folk are funny. And timing is everything.

sold truckloads but Hunky Dory, released about 6 months before, slipped out largely unheralded - and unpurchased.
I think the earlier album is superior, more complex thematically and musically sounds less dated than the album which soon after thrust Bowie into the glare.

sold truckloads but Hunky Dory, released about 6 months before, slipped out largely unheralded - and unpurchased.
I think the earlier album is superior, more complex thematically and musically sounds less dated than the album which soon after thrust Bowie into the glare.

Maladjusted - mildly inspired curate's egg which apparently rendered him unsignable for years.

You Are the Quarry - 7 years in the colon, this steaming, monotonous turd of an album, followed by the equally desperate bowel movement that was Ringleader is where me and Mr Misery have had to part after more than two decades of fun together.

Reading between the lines of the usual 5 star Amazon reviews, I'm guessing that Years of Refusal is another fetid stool.

was certainly the record that brought them to the publics' attention and even gave them a few hits, but for me 'Fourth Drawer Down' was the better record, wildly inventive and exciting

I discovered them when Bandwagonesque came out. And it is still my favourite album.

But their biggest album was Songs from Northern Britain. Which is also a great album, actually. As is every single thing they have ever done. I think.

And Your Bird Can Sing is worth most of Pepper added together

The public loved Harvest but I'd rather take Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere to a desert island.

The second was good and broke them into the public eye, but the first was sooooooooooooo much better...then they hit us between the eyes with with 3, then steamroller us into nirvana with Led Zep4...not sure what all this has to do with the thread, but fuckme, they were good!!!

Tommy made them worldwide megastars but does anybody actually listen to it anymore? How quaint to think there was a time when "First Rock Opera" was a title fought over. Quadrophenia, too, is largely unlistenable now. All those keyboards! Now, here's where I get controversial: the best Who album, song for song, is The Who By Numbers. Let the howls of outrage begin.

Altough you could argue that he didn´t need any more cementing at that point. But that one sealed the icon-status and made him what he is now. Before that, however big ones he´d made, he was just a Duracell bunny chasing his dream, wasn´t he?

Tunnel Of Love is a favourite, yes. I´m not even bothered about the occasionally rather awful production. It takes a while to "get" TOF. It´s not as ball knocking as some of his other stuff, but once it gets you it gets you good, which is also how I feel about The Ghost Of Tom Joad. He´s just as good when he is quiet as when he´s pounding his chest on the mountain.

I have tickets to see him when the tour reaches Sweden. Feel like a five year old waiting for cake.

by any sane standard, a great album. But for me it has been spoiled by classic rock overkill, to the point where, especially with Baba O'Riley and Won't Get Fooled Again, I literally can't hear it anymore (a condition quite distinct from finding it unlistenable). By Numbers, on the other hand, is that rarest of beasts: a genuinely neglected work by a major artist, somewhat along the lines of Neil Y's On The Beach before that album's relatively recent rise to prominence. Seriously, go through it song by song and you won't find anything close to a duff track. Even Blue Red & Grey, open to charges of tweeness, is twee in that uniquely Pete way. As the token Entwistle track, Success Story beats My Wife; as an opener, Slip Kid is--yes--equal to Baba O, and can still be heard with something like fresh ears; Squeeze Box is a killer semi-novelty pop tune in the tradition of Happy Jack and Magic Bus; How Many Friends is Pete at his pissed-off soul-baring best, a bit his take on Positively 4th St. Really, I'm at a loss to explain this album's relative obscurity, but the upside of that is that it's there, waiting to be discovered.

Henry the Human Fly to I Want to See the Bright Lights myself.

...it probably depends on what you heard first. For me that happened to be Henry the Human Fly, years after the fact, and it's still in my all-time top ten. But I've got a friend who feels the same way about Rumour and Sigh, and I'm not about to tell him he's wrong. Even though he's clearly wrong.

is indeed a great album, but the two he released at the end/start of the various Millenium (millenia?), Mock Tudor and Old Kit Bag contain some of his best guitar work, plus some stonking songs.

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