Best final album?

Inspired by this thread.

Let's keep this to the actual final intended album by an artist. (Posthumous releases don't count, for example.)

I'll start with Blackstar. An astonishingly good album by David Bowie, especially when you consider that he knew it was his last.

 

is this 'best final album' compared to other artists final albums... or 'best album by an artist that is also the final album'

 

Abbey Road (yeah I know)- Beatles
Synchronicity - Police
On Every Street - Dire Straits
Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel
Gaucho - Steely Dan

I’m using the “best final album compared to other artists” premise.

 

Has to be Abbey Road, right? (even though Let It Be was released after it, Abbey Road was actually recorded after Let It Be)

 

First post and we have a winner.

 

Not necessarily their all-time best, but some bands that released very strong final albums:

Bob Marley - Uprising
Fugazi - The Argument
SRV - In Step
Savatage - Poets & Madmen
Allman Bros - Hitting the Note
Thin Lizzy - Thunder & Lightning
Black Sabbath - 13
Death - Sound of Perseverance
Motley Crue - Saints of Los Angeles

 

John Coltrane, whichever album you consider to be his last - he went out reaching ever upward.

 

Warehouse: Songs and Stories - Hüsker Dü

 

Do active artists count?

Tool - 1,000 Days
Guns N' Roses - Guns N' Roses
D'Angelo - Black Messiah
Roger Waters - Is This The Life We Really Want?

 

The Shamen-UV, 1998

 

These days I am thinking Bowie's Blackstar.

 

Warren Zevon ~ "The Wind"

 

Duke's Big 4

 

Taxi Driver or Obsession, depending on which you consider to be his final one.

 

Queen - Innuendo
The Zombies - Odessey & Oracle

 

Ornette Coleman's last official release, Sound Grammar, won a Pulitzer. It was the second jazz album to be so honored.

 

Uncle Tupelo- Anodyne
The White Stripes- Icky Thump
Sonic Youth- The Eternal

 

Band Of Gypsys

 

good choices.
wrt steely dan, are you just writing off “two against nature” and “everything must go”? i dig them both, myself...

 

Joy Division with Closer

 

Aphrodite’s Child - 666

 

Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Nirvana - In Utero
Jawbreaker - Dear You
The Doors - L.A. Woman
Otis Redding - The Dock of the Bay
Roxy Music - Avalon
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Street Survivors

 

Blackstar

 

Roxy Music's Avalon.
The Smiths' Strangeways Here We Come.