The “sophomore slump” has become such a cliched element of industry lore that it’s practically expected. After a respectable debut, an otherwise decent band invariably follows up with a well-intentioned misfire. Often, this stems from a self-fulfilling prophecy – the artist tries so hard not to release Debut: Part II that they wind up straying from the positive attributes that set them apart in the first place.
Every now and then, a promising act pulls it all together on their second outing. Whether via subtle refinement, an impressive continuation, or a gratifying change in direction, they dazzle us with timeless and unexpected excellence. Decades later, when catalogs and careers are said and done, it’s often these special second efforts we remember most.
Here, we list ten fantastic albums that somehow dodged the accursed sophomore slump and never got old.
10. The Horse Flies – Gravity Dance (1991)
The Horse Flies debuted as a weird, bluegrass-tinged collective with 1987’s jarring and barely-accessible Human Fly. Imagine a country hoedown diluted by the lonesome desert soundscapes of Scenic’s Acquatica, and you get the picture. Four years later, they grafted sharp pop sensibility to the mix and released 1991’s Gravity Dance, a tour-de-force of haunting, off-kilter, countrified rock songs. Apocalyptic dreams mingle with horror-movie fables of self-destruction like “Life Is a Rubber Rope”, which this reviewer heard on the University of Miami’s fabled WVUM and bought that very day.
Spooky tall tales such as “Two Candles” and the iridescent “Time Is Burning” whisk us back to an eclectic, freewheeling era when college radio actually meant something. Long out of print, the Horse Flies finally re-released Gravity Dance on Bandcamp.com late last year.
9. Lake – Lake II (1978)
Take every talented, easy-rock act of the mid-1970s, from Badfinger to Ambrosia, pilfer their best attributes, and mix well. The result would be German/British conglomerate Lake, particularly their unjustly forgotten second effort, 1978’s Lake II. Lake enjoyed a brief moment in the Bavarian sun, selling almost half a million copies of their 1976 self-titled debut while opening for acts like Genesis and Bob Dylan. Several winning progressive-rock elements can be found here as well, including extended song lengths, intricate harmonies, and relatively complex time signatures. But in the end, Lake II is all about hooks, hooks, and more hooks. One earworm follows another on songs like “See Them Glow”, “Red Lake”, and the lilting “Highway 216”, whose laconic riff and noodling keyboards should make “Time Passages”-era Al Stewart fans insanely jealous.
8. The Ocean Blue – Cerulean (1991)
The Ocean Blue’s 1989 debut made quite an impression, rocking much harder than their mature “Indie-lite” genre might suggest. Then they turned it all upside down on 1991’s Cerulean, one of the most romantic records ever released. Few albums establish a mood this pure and then maintain it with such flawless verve and precision. By and large, the cuts are not love songs; it’s more the overall feel of the disc, a heavenly elegance that washes over the ears like warm bathwater.
College alterna-hit “Ballerina Out of Control” offers a case in point: buzzing, softly-plucked guitar relaxes and hypnotizes while David Schelzel’s ghostly vocals waft overhead like vapor. Or try “A Separate Reality”, whose contiguous melody rises and falls like a gentle flight of stairs. The Ocean Blue also grows\ some backbone when the time is right, such as the vibrant riffs bracketing “The Planetarium Scene”. Cerulean is utterly impeccable from start to finish, like a smooth sail on a crystal-clear lake. For anyone with even a speck of romance in their hearts, it’s a must-own.
7. Cinderella – Long Cold Winter (1988)
If there is one dirty, inconvenient, exasperating hair-metal skeleton still rattling around our oh-so-refined closet, it’s Cinderella’s Long Cold Winter. A la the Rolling Stones or classic Aerosmith, the band took an unexpected bluesy turn after 1986’s trashy debut Night Songs, mixing buoyant pop verve with remarkably strong material (for this accursed genre, anyway). Our vaunted hair-metal antibodies sustained a mortal blow the first time we heard “Gypsy Road’s” woozy, mind-blowing central riff. Then “Last Mile’s” joyful AC/DC exuberance knocked us to the mat, and we succumbed forever to “Coming Home’s” Lead Zeppelin-esque mix of hard rock and sensitive folk-balladry. If nothing else, Long Cold Winter is still fun as all hell – a cheesy 1980s netherworld where time stops, booze flows, and all the long-haired girls (and guys!) say yes. Go ahead, make fun of a babbling old geezer. But three decades later, I regret nothing.
6. Deadwood Forest – Mellodramatic (1999)
Deadwood Forest’s uninspired 1997 debut gave zero hint of the masterpiece to come. But for classic progressive-rock fans tired of overwrought neo-metal and dime-a-dozen Marillion wannabes, the unheralded Mellodramatic was a godsend. Finally, a post-1970s art-rock band that got it right! From the moment “Pioneer” starts things off, with its plucked bass and sweeping Mellotron, other modern pretenders get left in the dust. None have recorded anything as lovely as the breezy keyboards and flute on “City in the Sea”, or as cerebrally intense as the spiraling “Dry”.
Let’s not overlook vocalist Ryan Guidry, whose kaleidoscopic vocals channel both Greg Lake and the Moody Blues’ John Lodge into a stream of ethereal otherworldliness. The entire record is like that, weaving revered influences into each song and doing them proudly; close your eyes, and it’s 1973 all over again, with a Yes/ELP/Genesis triple-bill on tap. Fans of competent orchestral rock know how hard it is to find, and Mellodramatic delivers as well as any album of the past quarter-century.
5. Creeper Lagoon – Take Back the Universe and Give Me Yesterday (2001)
Disregarding a few short EPs and cassettes, Creeper Lagoon jumped straight from ‘understated with potential’ (1998’s I Become Small and Go) to unacknowledged rock demigods on 2001’s Take Back the Universe and Give Me Yesterday. This criminally under-heard album, one of that year’s most complex and satisfying releases, reconquers our playlist every couple of years or so. It’s chock full of fantastic guitar-rock pearls, none better than the indomitable “Hey Sister”, a carefree romp perfectly suited for highway abandon. The whole record is soaked through with the same roaring sense of adventure – a wild visit to a strange town that its unsuspecting inhabitants won’t soon forget. Tracks like “Up All Night” and the seething “Dead Man Saloon” plant Take Back the Universe miles away from anything else Creeper Lagoon ever did. Rather than a sophomore slump, Universe became their pinnacle.
4. Warren Zevon – Warren Zevon (1976)
We contend that 1970s troubadours like Harry Nilsson, Gordon Lightfoot, and Warren Zevon lived, loved, and partied harder than all but the most degenerate rock acts of the era. Less a second effort than a do-over, 1976’s Warren Zevon followed Zevon’s forgotten 1970 debut, Wanted Dead or Alive. The guest list on Warren Zevon reads like a 1970s Hall of Fame primer, with Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Jackson Browne, and Linda Ronstadt among the big names. Classic tracks include the cowboy hymn, “Frank and Jesse James”, party-till-you-die anthem “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead”, and that immortal lament of irony, “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me”. The strongest track on this justly revered touchstone may be “The French Inhaler”, about an ex-girlfriend Zevon saw with another musician after their breakup. It’s the kind of aching, romantic requiem that paralyzes the listener at first impression, elevating the entire album around it.
3. Ned’s Atomic Dustbin – Are You Normal? (1992)
Ned’s Atomic Dustbin were already MTV ‘Buzz Bin’ darlings by late 1991, thanks to energetic college radio hits like “Grey Cell Green” and “Kill Your Television” from their debut God Fodder. While Fodder certainly had its fine moments, even some great ones, Ned’s trademark wall-of-guitar-and-bass blitzkrieg would find perfection on 1992’s Are You Normal. It’s difficult to describe the backbreaking, adrenal-gland rush songs like “Not Sleeping Around” still provide, even 30 years later.
Take the dynamic rave-rock of Happy Mondays or the Stone Roses; beef up the songwriting consistency; force-feed it a few cans of Popeye’s spinach, and you’re getting warm. Whereas much of early 1990s grunge sprang from suppressed adolescent angst, Normal taps into something more cerebral and cultivated – a dense yet inexplicably melodic curtain of guitar bracketed by parallel basses both high and low. One can definitely hear a slender progressive influence as well. To this day, Are You Normal still feels like an exhilarating shot across rock’s bow that hasn’t quite landed yet.
2. Boston – Don’t Look Back (1978)
1976’s Boston was the best-selling debut of its time; aside from a couple of hits, most of 1986’s Third Stage sounds like bad Whitesnake. Nestled in-between was Don’t Look Back, one of a phalanx of no-questions-asked, ‘set-em-and-forget-em’ 1978 party-rock albums that included Van Halen and Ace Frehley’s solo debut. According to David Wild, Boston mastermind Tom Scholz considered Don’t Look Back a subpar rush job. So how come it’s still so much darn fun? Though Boston remains an indisputable classic, it waxed overly elegiac at times, diluting the festivities with bummers like girls walking away and drifters leaving it all behind. That’s all fine and dandy unless you’re looking for unmitigated good times weighed down by zero concerns.
That is what Don’t Look Back delivers on tracks like “Feelin’ Satisfied”, “It’s Easy”, and the self-explanatory “Party”, where you can “meet your friends and have a toke or two / In a place where they can never play the music too loud”! In one of those inexplicable Billboard chart quirks we adore, the title track actually eclipsed “More Than a Feeling” by one slot, Number Four vs. Number Five. Parting shot, for those who denigrate Don’t Look Back as more of the same: It’s called a ‘formula’ because it works, people.
1. The Shore – Light Years (2008)
Britpop has always been a cranky and frustrating genre. When the Shore released their self-titled debut in 2004, critical reaction was decidedly mixed – not to mention the fact that 2008’s Light Years landed about ten years past the genre’s mid-1990s heyday. But what a difference. This personal favorite boasts a seductive intimacy typically reserved for more baroque pop while still maintaining the muscle side of the equation. Or perhaps Light Years just does Britpop the way it should have been done from the beginning – inspired rock songs peppered with labyrinthine bridges, tricky segues, and other unorthodox yet engrossing touches.
But what happens when each individual song on an album contains half a dozen hooks of that caliber? Then we’re in Valhalla territory. Songwriter Ben Ashley has a marked talent for constructing unexpected arpeggio progressions, such as in the bucolic “Wandering Light” or the trippy “Rising Flood”. Sophomore effort or not, Light Years is one of the finest rock records nobody ever heard; just about anyone who manages to encounter this album adores it. Unfortunately, thanks to a confluence of bad luck and poor timing, not enough people did.