Pretentious Music Alert: The Two-Album Rule

The other day, Brigitte, Lady Amy, and I were having a conversation on the sidewalk outside the local YWCA, about albums we all like. I professed my love of Joanna Newsom's new triple(!) album Have One On Me, while Lady Amy twisted her nose at my mention of Ms. Newsom because "her voice is annoying" and professed her love of the most recent album by Why? called Eskimo Snow. I twisted my nose at what I felt was a dud of an album. Then Brigitte brought up something that I hadn't considered: The Two-Album Rule.

The Two-Album Rule is pretty simple. Unless the musical artist is supremely talented, the rule is that an artist, even one you might like a lot, should only be given two albums before they are set aside for new artists. As Brigitte said, it's not really fair to give a band more than two albums before moving onto the next album.

The two-album rule, in my mind, applies to many artists from the past decade. The Strokes are a perfect example. They had a great debut in Is This It? and followed it up with a solid second album Room on Fire. Their third album? They tried to do shift their sound to something that didn't sound like the first two records, and it was terrible. Now all the band members are doing solo projects. Likewise, the same could be said about Broken Social Scene. I gave BSS much love with their You Forgot It In People and even more love with their masterful self-titled record. Their newest, which came out last Tuesday, Forgiveness Rock Record, while solid, has not really hit me in any way rivaling the high points of those other two records. And why should I waste my time listening to their new album when there are a lot of newer artists deserving of their shot at a window of two-album rule-osity? This year so far, those albums are Malachai's Ugly Side of Love and Free Energy's Stuck on Nothing?





And in years to come, we will surely see if Vampire Weekend's excellent two albums, the self-titled debut and the follow-up that came out this year, Contra, fit into this rule or if they are an exception. Here, then, are a few exceptions to this rule:

The artist is a Total Freakin' Genius.

My favorite band of all time, R.E.M., obviously fits in this mold. Why do they fit, though? I say it has to do with their ability to evolve naturally. They started as a purely power-jangle-pop band (Murmur, Reckoning), slowly evolved into its gothic folk era (Fables of the Reconstruction eventually gave way to Out of Time and Automatic for the People), tackled arena-rock with intelligence (Life's Rich Pageant, Document, Green, and Monster) and eventually settled down as elder statesmen (New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Up). (I choose to ignore their last three albums, Reveal, Around the Sun, and Accelerate).



Likewise, it appears that Joanna Newsom is following the Total Freakin' Genius mold. Her first record The Milk-Eyed Meander was a basic mission statement to her sound, while Ys expanded beyond quirky-voice-and-harp into orchestral arrangements and 12-minute songs. Her latest, Have One on Me, firmly establishes her as the songwriter of the generation, and her quirky-voice theatrics from her first two albums are largely muted here, instead revealing a maturing vocal style and a knack for creating timeless compositions that are clearly coming from the inspiration of a Total. Freakin'. Genius.

Other recent artists that could arguably fit in this mold include Animal Collective, The Fiery Furnaces, and Radiohead. One could make an argument for many other artists that fit this mold. (Like, for example, in the comments section!)

They could only make one genius album, and it's not cuz they went bananas.
This rule applies to artists from the '00s such as The Arcade Fire, Interpol, and ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead. The three of those bands made arguably three of the best albums of the '00s with Funeral, Turn On the Bright Lights, and Source Tags and Codes. And, the three of them followed up those masterpieces with mediocre follow-ups like Neon Bible, Antics, and Worlds Apart. My theory: the genius crammed into one LP was just too much to possibly follow up on in future albums.







Funeral's combination of bombastic emotions and gorgeous songwriting was so combustible that the follow-up Neon Bible, and its Springsteen ambitions, couldn't possibly live up to its expectations. Antics followed up the foreboding feeling of Turn On the Bright Lights with the weirdly upbeat-sounding songs like "Slow Hands" and "Evil". And Trail of Dead decided to get away from a pure guitar attack by adding (gasp) orchestral elements. All of these follow-ups worked decently on their own, but next to their comparatively masterful other albums, they fall flat.

They could only make one genius album, and it is cuz they went bananas.
Recent news that Jeff Magnum of Neutral Milk Hotel recently played a show is pretty uplifting, because previous to that, the only explanation for having one genius album for his band is that he went totally bananas. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea has, in time, revealed itself to be one of the best albums of the past 20 years, and the only explanation for why Magnum never made a follow-up is that he went totally bananas. This, of course, is acceptable for musical reasons, because the album is truly a blessing to we mortals. Of course, if Magnum starts making music again, we music nerds can decide whether he belongs in the Total Freakin' Genius category, the Two-Album Rule, or the One Genius Album category. Until then, let's all sing about the King of Carrot Flowers:

What say you, Blogulator readers? Where do you categorize your favorite bands?

Pretentious Music Alert: Lady Gaga = Pink Floyd's "The Wall" + Late '90s Pop Idols?

I sadly missed seeing probably the only thing worthy of actually seeing at the Grammy's last night live: the highly-discussed Lady Gaga/Elton John duet/mash-up that opened the show. If there's anything more lame than the usual Grammy performances that take a recording artist from one era of music and have them perform with an artist from another era of music, I'd like to know what it is. (Actually, I know what it is -- when it's an artist from one era and totally separate musical genre, like when Andrea Bocelli and Mary J. Blige sang together last night.) But Lady Gaga's total inherent weirdness ended up meshing quite well with Sir Elton John:

What sets this performance over the top for me are a few things:

1) Lady Gaga's stage show. I know that most pop stars have elaborate staging for their tours similar to this one, but I am really loving how meta her entire performance has become, taking the themes (and title) of her album-and-a-half The Fame Monster with her on tour, which is reflected not just in her live show but her music videos, songs, etc. In fact, her "Fame Factory" stage set-up reminded me a lot of Pink Floyd's The Wall tour -- all high concept, kinda tongue-in-cheek, but also carrying a bit of a message. I'm not quite sure if her entire presentation is her being just a little bit ironic (dontcha think?) or if she's really in on some kind of self-referential prank, but either way, it's a helluva lot more enjoyable than watching Pink be "shocking" by singing a ballad with no drums and getting involved in a Cirque du Soleil-style act like she did last night.

2) Lady Gaga's inherent weirdness. Her songs might be pretty straight-forward when listened outside of the context of her performance, but her style is influenced just as much by high-fashion as it is pop music. That she manages to constantly be onstage not wearing pants and not seem like she's doing it just for attention ala Britney Spears is maybe a teeny-tiny-little-bit ... feminist? (Help me out with that one, ladies.)

3) Lady Gaga's voice, and obvious overall talent. Damn, she's got a voice on her, don't she? She sounds like a different singer in every one of her songs. Plus we all know she's musically trained on the piano and most likely many other instruments. Taylor Swift, I love ya, but face the facts that Lady Gaga's a tour de force who likely will have much deeper career longevity.