Bands who made the same album over and over again

I disagree. The first two maybe sound alike. London Calling is completely different, a radical departure from their first two records. Sandinista is another big departure, very unique. Even Combat Rock and - if you will consider - Cut The Crap are different.

 

Totally agree, I was surprised to see the Smiths on this thread. The experiments with syndrums, Johnny Marr's guitar developing into folk areas, even funk. The later stuff is quite different.

 

I hate to say it, but I agree that it is BOSTON. And I still love them so.

 

I don't agree. I think it is easy to think that since Tom Scholz has such a unique and identifiable guitar tone - when he plays, no one else sounds like that. So when he plays, it sounds like Boston, but I can't listen to Third Stage and think it is the same album as the first two. No way.

 

Eventually every artist will be named, no matter how illogical!

 

Well, I suppose if you consider highly individualized brilliance sticking to a sound...
NYF

 

i'm just waiting for alex to say bowie or something ... smh

 

Not really. Once he went more "Americana" and rootsy around 1987, his sound varied a lot.

No way something like "Paper in Fire" would've fit on "American Fool"...

 

Nobody made THE EXACT SAME ALBUM OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
I think the idea is WHO HAD A SOUND AND STUCK TO IT.
This is not a BAD THING.
Unless that same album REALLY SUCKS OVER AND OVER.
AC/DC is probably the prime example and most of their albums are PRETTY GOOD.
Unless you don't like THEM

 

What's amazing about Dylan is that no album has ever sounded the same. If we go back in time, back to his first album, it was folky blues, with two originals. The second album, Freewheelin' was protest songs mostly self-composed, with a couple of romantic ballads. The third, Times, was predominantly protest, with two romantic ballads, and nary a trace of a cover, unlike Honey Just Allow Me on Freewheelin'. Another Side was more personal, but acoustic, and no direct finger pointing songs, unlike the previous Hattie Carroll. Then you get the mixture of acoustic / electric on Bringing It All Back Home, the full Chicago electric on Highway 61, and the electric transition between Nashville / The Band on Blonde on Blonde.

There's a right turn to country / folk on the Basement Tapes, and genre hopping between austere religious ballads and country on John Wesley Harding. Country is fully embraced on Nashville Skyline, but at the same time he pastiches Elvis on Peggy Day. Self Portrait has a different sound to Skyline, and ventures into instrumentals. New Morning is also different to what has gone previously with a combination of Tex-mex on If Not For You, waltz on Winterlude, jazz on If Dogs Run Free.

Dylan, even leaping forward to the last 20 years, has made different albums. Time Out of Mind may have deployed Lanois production, but is as removed from Oh Mercy as can possibly be. Love & Theft has a different sound, and more humorous songs: Modern Times is also different to Love & Theft, and Together Through Life is also as different from Modern Times, as it was to Love & Theft, yet the band on both was the same.

When we get to the standards, from Shadows through to Triplicate, Shadows sounds more sombre to Fallen Angels, and Triplicate's choice of songs is also different to Fallen Angels.

 

The Clash

Even those two are very different. The first album had short stabbing songs with a sound all of its own - very tinny guitars (which in fact sound great). For the second, they brought in Sandy Pearlman who gave them a beefier, more muscular sound. Even the songwriting had shifted somewhat.

 

I agree.

 

I thought it was because he plays everything.

 

It is logical that if you are going to make the same album over & over you should make sure you start with a good one.

 

Yeah, "Rope" feels a bit more than "1970s rock" than the debut, which is closer to "standard punk". It's not a huge leap, but there's a definite difference.

Even if one thinks the 1st two sound alike, though, it continues to boggle the mind that anyone would think "LC" sounds at all like those two, or that "Sandinista!" sounds like the early albums.

"Combat Rock" has little in common with the earlier albums, either. It's not necessarily a departure from the prior 2, but it sounds nothing like the 1st 2...

 

What does how we feel about Them have to do with AC/DC?

 

i love give 'em enough rope

 

Lists like this ALWAYS need to start with this band. It's a running joke with musicians that I work with - they've been making the same album for 40 years.

Certainly correct and certainly a funny one. This is why I hate getting roped into labels as a musician. You're a jazz artist. You're punk. You're blues. You're this. You're that. If you call yourself one thing, you're going to be one thing. Go be many things. This here is the beauty of rock and roll, something that I think has been lost on the older fans of the genre. Rock and roll is the escape. Rock and roll is the answer. Rock and roll is everything. Those folks that try to pigeonhole rock and roll into one thing are asking for trouble and, even worse, boredom.

I love the Stones and I had to hesitate for a moment on this one but then I remembered I had internal conversation about this very matter while listening to a podcast about their 80s work. I'll meet you on the middle on your point. They certainly made the same type of record from Some Girls through Dirty Work. They didn't always sound exactly the same as the parts and ideas were everchanging, BUT the production techniques and guitar sounds were ridiculously tame between 78 and 86.

On the flip of that, you can't tell me that 69 to 75 presented the same Rolling Stones album to album. That's such a go-to period for that band. And I'll go one further - when Steel Wheels hit I think they were done turning in carbon copies too. Not that all those albums were great but they managed to at least show they were trying to be a bit different each time out.

That 78-86 period, though...ooofah...

 

I feel like Them Again was the first album all over again.

 

Once I read someone saying that London Calling was the punk genre defining album. I had to laugh.

 

OK I will admit that I am nominating a band I don't really listen to and, therefore, I am writing this knowing that I may be ignorant but a band that I think fits the thread title is Journey.

I really only know their singles but they struck me as a band that had a very narrow formula and stuck to it. I know they had personnel changes and all that but that's my perception. I could be wrong.

 

Yeah, "LC" is a "punk album" only because it came from a band who'd been punk.

IMO, any notion that the Clash were a true "punk band" ended after "Rope" - and maybe after the debut.

But whatever their roots might've been, "LC" isn't a "punk album" at all - it's far too varied to be captured by that descriptor...

 

I don't know Journey well either, but I know they were closer to prog in their early days.

I think they "went pop" as they continued - I strongly suspect their first few albums sound little/nothing like the hits...

 

The Moody Blues after The Days of Future Passed. Was there a clue in the title of what was to come?

 

I think there's a much bigger leap between the first Clash album and Rope than between Rope and London Calling. And we can't forget that The Clash were never standard punk... lots of reggae and other sounds on the very first album.