Acts whose entire album output has always been on the decline, with no exception

At one point, I might have been persuaded to agree, but their last album was shockingly good.

Also, "Orbus Terrarum" was a huge letdown. I think they recovered a bit after that.

"Pommes Fritz" is a better album than "Orblivion"?

Tricky - probably, but who's even bothered to track the descent of the last few?

Garbage - surely no one can argue against them. And they've done it to such an extreme (from an awesome debut to really hideously bad stuff within two albums).

no, the first tortoise album is terrible.

Agree completely, on a track-by-track basis. But... I think there was a good track on Heartbeat City, yet I'll still take The Cars...

Exile is so overrated, I've always considered Whipsmart to be the real classic in her catalog.

Contrarian. DeRogatorous. Please expand to 2500 words and submit for "Kill Your Second-Tier Idols."

I also think Sandanista! is the Clash's best album, but I don't expect many people to agree with me on that one.

You know, [i]Beauty Stab[/i] and [i]How to Be a Zillionaire[/i] are really, really good, and to this day I play them way more than I do [i]Lexicon of Love[/i]. But that's me, I guess. And even [i]Alphabet City[/i] has one of their most sublime songs ever, "Rage and then regret."

Btw. I am kind of surprised there is no mention of Massive Attack yet. The only thing that prevents me from listing them is that I like "Protection" better than "Blue Lines", but I think most don't.

Garbage's best album is their second.

hmm, it certainly has a lot of their finest moments but there's also a lot more filler on Version 2.0 compared with Garbage.

and

Stone Roses > Second Coming > Ian Brown solo > John Squire solo

Possibly King Crimson, though i havent heard everythin, In the Court remains my favourite.

Definitely not, I love The Vibrators dearly but the quality of their albums has been up and down all over the place over the years - and even if they'd released an album of Knox humming tunelessly over the sound of Eddie farting in the bath, it would have been hard-pushed not to be an improvment over 1996's execrable and frankly embarassing "unpunked".

"ian dury and the blockheads?"

True up until the release of Mr. Lovepants in 1998, but definitely not thereafter.

"Pere Ubu?"

I can see an argument for this up until they split up in '82; but since they reformed in '88 their albums have been up and down like a whore's drawers in quality terms.

Steadily downhill for the first ten years but 1981's Discipline has to be the second best - if not the best album they've done, and over the last 10 years, even allowing for the difficulty in deciphering which releases are "official" and which aren't, and sometimes even which are "live" and which aren't, the quality control's been up and down like the teeth of a rusty saw.

[New expressions to describe a regularly repeated up-and-then-down-and-then-up-again motion urgently required. See-saws need not apply]

Actually, "First Edition" being the blip that Metal Box was better than. OK, allowing for that one...

Cheap Trick (1977) > In Color > Heaven Tonight > Dream Police > All Shook Up > Next Position Please > Standing On The Edge > The Doctor > Lap Of Luxury > Busted > Woke Up With A Monster

Alas, it is impossible to argue that Cheap Trick (1997) continued the decline, so the chain has to stop. I suspect that the assumptions that most people would dispute are a) that Cheap Trick (1977) is their studio peak (an opinion that I've always had), b) that The Doctor is better than Lap Of Luxury (I'm almost completely unfamiliar with the material on The Doctor, but I think that you would have to dock LOL the max for the invasion of the outside songwriters to support this opinion...), and c) that Busted is better than Woke Up With A Monster (probably unsupportable, although my only exposure to WUWAM was when one of the videos showed up on Beavis & Butthead...).

-- xhuxk (xedd...), May 19th, 2005.

While they never matched their first album, I don't think it'd be fair to call their output from then on a "steady decline." I thought Truth and Soul, Reality of my Surroundings, and Give a Monkey a Brain all had some good moments on them.

And the Sex Pistols.
Probably Suicide, too.

You've not heard their last one the, presumably? Not their best by any means, but defiitely their best since Trade Test Transmissions imho.