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Don't call it a comeback! Hiatus albums

W

Woodface

pfm Member
May as well start this.

We have a few contenders, bands that went away for a good while & then came back, back to their best!

I'll nominate a few to get us going:

XTC - Apple Venus Vol 1
The Go Betweens - a tricky start but they hit teh Jackpot with Oceans Apart
Sleater Kinney - No Cities to Love, probably the most enduring & successful post hiatus creatively?
 
Wire - The Ideal Copy in 1987, after an 8 year period of solo projects. Then they lay fallow again from 1991 until the early 2000s. But that second comeback is IMHO less than inspired.
 
ciderglider said:
Wire - The Ideal Copy in 1987, after an 8 year period of solo projects. Then they lay fallow again from 1991 until the early 2000s. But that second comeback is IMHO less than inspired.
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Completely this. Although I would disagree with you about the second comeback. Some of that material is well on par with the late 70s LPs. Are we allowed to claim three comebacks here - mid eighties, early noughties, and then mid tweens?

I saw them first at the infamous Barbican gig in 2003, and then at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds (a venue I'd played at, many years before) in Jan 2020, just before the pandemic - the night Andy Gill died, possibly as one of its early victims.

They were utterly inspired. The stage was tiny, the intensity was enormous, and they did "Former Airline" as an encore.
 
tiggers said:
Peter Gabriel - 12 years between New Blood and I/O but New Blood wasn't new music so really 21 years between Up and I/O... worth the wait though as I/O is a masterpiece.
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I’ve only just got into him. I do really like I/O, think the alternative mixes are a distraction though.
 
Woodface said:
I’ve only just got into him. I do really like I/O, think the alternative mixes are a distraction though.
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Yeah I agree re. the mixes in some ways... especially as my favourite versions are mixed across the different mixes.

Gabriel is one of those artists whose work you appreciate more and more over time rather than each album being a case of instant gratification. Most people recommend So as his best work and while it's good it is a bit of an 80s cliche. IMO his best work is Peter Gabriel III (Melt as the US calls it), Peter Gabriel IV (US: Security) and Passion (The Last Temptation of Christ soundtrack). Never tire of those three despite listening to the former for over 40 years now.

Trivia alert: Intruder (the opening track on III) is notable for the first ever used of the full fat classic 80s gated reverb drum sound used extensively by Phil Collins and others throughout the early 80s... it was discovered by accident by Hugh Padgham when he opened an overhead mic, intended to be used as a talk back mic, above the drum kit when he and Steve Lillywhite were working on the track. The microphone was heavily compressed as well as using a gate and the sound was born. Co-incidentally the drummer on that Gabriel track is Phil Collins. Additionally it is interesting to note that Lillywhite had already been trying to generate a similar sound more conventionally when working with Siouxsie and XTC, when the 'accident' with the mic gave he and Padgham the sound they were looking for.

Right let's get back on topic. :D
 
tiggers said:
Yeah I agree re. the mixes in some ways... especially as my favourite versions are mixed across the different mixes.

Gabriel is one of those artists whose work you appreciate more and more over time rather than each album being a case of instant gratification. Most people recommend So as his best work and while it's good it is a bit of an 80s cliche. IMO his best work is Peter Gabriel III (Melt as the US calls it), Peter Gabriel IV (US: Security) and Passion (The Last Temptation of Christ soundtrack). Never tire of those three despite listening to the former for over 40 years now.

Trivia alert: Intruder (the opening track on III) is notable for the first ever used of the full fat classic 80s gated reverb drum sound used extensively by Phil Collins and others throughout the early 80s... it was discovered by accident by Hugh Padgham when he opened an overhead mic, intended to be used as a talk back mic, above the drum kit when he and Steve Lillywhite were working on the track. The microphone was heavily compressed as well as using a gate and the sound was born. Co-incidentally the drummer on that Gabriel track is Phil Collins. Additionally it is interesting to note that Lillywhite had already been trying to generate a similar sound more conventionally when working with Siouxsie and XTC, when the 'accident' with the mic gave he and Padgham the sound they were looking for.

Right let's get back on topic. :D
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I've cheated & added them to my Qobuz library, will give 'Melt' another listen tonight.

I just think I/O is too much of a good thing, he has one hell of a voice though, two hours is a lot to absorb.
 
Television- Television. Not great, but better than we had a right to expect.

Traffic- Far From Home. Wish they hadn’t bothered.
 
Kraftwerk‘s gap between Electric Cafe and Tour De France Soundtracks was 17 years, and the latter was certainly a better album than the former!

They released The Mix in between those two, but that was just a remix/re-imagining of past work (as is everything they’ve done since TdF), it had no new music.
 
The Hives. 13 years between "The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons" and their previous offering, "Lex Hives".
 
Van der Graaf Generator - Godbluff

Band takes three and a bit years off, draws a line under their previous sound and produce a fresher sound.

And then "Present" after 19 years off.
 
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The Feelies. 7 years between two of the finest rock albums ever made - Crazy Rhythms and The Good Earth - and 20 years between Time for a Witness (1991) and Here Before (2011).
 
Peter Perrett, 1980 Baby’s Got a Gun 2017 How the West Was Won. I was surprised he was still alive never mind making good records.
 
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