Aging rock act on new album: This time we wanted to go back to the basics

yes

examples?

Move like Bowie

see also Dogstar

Music legend Keanu Reeves finally got sick of his chart topping pop hits and went back to the basics of grunge

I guess maybe...Johnny Marr w/Modest Mouse?...but I feel like he'd slowly turned himself into a jobber anyway

Derek & the Dominoes but I still feel like that was more just a naming conceit I think most ppl think Layla is an Eric Clapton song

Mudcrutch

Dave Grohl seems to like the "guy in a rock band" move

a lotta "second bands" that might as well have been called solo projects are halfway one of those - Wings and Zwan come to mind (should have just called it Zwings tbh).

Tin Machine definitely distinct tho in that he was already a solo act and so the gesture of now appearing in a "band" is its own thing. D-12 I think notionally predated Eminem's solo career but it definitely felt a little like "he's a superstar by day, but here he'll be just a regular rapper who's part of a posse," with "My Band" existing to send up said premise.

but in terms of "back to basics" i think the new-band move is less about back to basics in sound and more a lifestyle thing centered on the artist's persona/narrative - "I was feeling trapped and overwhelmed by the identity of (band), it was going to my head, I had to get back in touch with how it was when I first started out and was just a guy like any other, playing in a band." that COULD come along with promises of a back-to-basics sound but it doesn't have to, and in the cases discussed so far it really didn't.

you could argue Clapton took this the furthest by becoming a sideman for Delaney & Bonnie

Primal Scream's "Give Out But Don't Give Up" is surely an archetypal example of this, especially as they later stripped it down even more and released it again because the original didn't quite capture the full essence of just-some-guys-playing-in-a-room. Here's Bobby G:

"This Original Memphis Sessions sounds like six guys playing in a room together, playing live, and the album sounds more cohesive – it’s all-of-a-piece. It sounds like a classic album, in that sense, where the mood is kinda like the same throughout every song. It sounds like it was recorded in the same place, during the same sessions, and, yeah, it’s more cohesive and all-of-a-piece."

I think what he's trying to say is it's more cohesive and all-of-a-piece.

Grinderman as Nick Cave's "just a guy in a rock band" move?

Grinderman is definitely the closest to Tin Machine for sure

Dave Grohl is a weird case because he literally just was a guy in a band

Dave Grohl is a singular case, being a bland Jimmy Fallon-esque meme factory whose product's mediocrity is covered by the fact that everyone seems to like him (i'm a skeptic on the supposed inherent likability of Grohl tbh) and he's everywhere.

No one is going to say "we're going back to the basics of being guys in a rock band because we know this album isn't going to sell as well as the previous ones so it doesn't make sense to spend millions on something that's going to sell as well as an album we only spent thousands on. Anyway, we need something to tour on so why spend a lot of time."

I was thinking about whether Sugar was a guy-in-a-band return to older sound move for Bob Mould when I instead found these URLols:

https://flagpole.com/music/music-features/2016/11/09/bob-mould-gets-back-to-basics

https://wgnradio.com/2016/04/09/musician-bob-mould-is-getting-back-to-basics/

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/arts/music/bob-moulds-advice-keep-it-simple-and-avoid-streaming-music-services.html

The term “taking it back to basics” tends to get overused. Any time a musician subtracts a couple bells and whistles from his sound, the spin immediately becomes that he wanted to strip it down, and stick to the essentials of the songs. With Paul Westerberg, now, as ever, there is no spin.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/devendra-banhart-gets-back-to-basics-on-new-album-121546/

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/yg-the-architect-of-fuck-donald-trump-is-getting-back-to-the-basics-706184/

Sugar is a good one!

Primal Scream's "Give Out But Don't Give Up" is surely an archetypal example of this

the credits for this album are three times as long as for screamadelica.

Just the sound of 83 guys in a room

uncomfortable with donald trump being named "the architect of fuck," by rolling stone no less

many xps but The Next Day wasn't so much a "return to form" for Bowie as simply a return after 10 years w/o an album.

https://slate.com/culture/2013/03/david-bowies-the-next-day-reviewed.html

The Next Day
David Bowie’s excellent new album is a return to his high ’70s form without being a retread.

By Geeta Dayal

amazed that bill wyman managed to refrain from naming that album pictured upthread 'back to bassics'

xp there's a difference between critics evaluating an album as a "return to form" vs. an album being promoted as a return to form. also, that subhed uses "return" as a qualitative judgment and not as a description of the music or Bowie's approach.

Primal Scream's "Give Out But Don't Give Up" is surely an archetypal example of this

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0brzps8

... just try to stop me watching (anything else but) this. I suppose I should watch it for more Boaby G material.

there's a difference between critics evaluating an album as a "return to form" vs. an album being promoted as a return to form

Not really. If the publicist writes the press release, the critics will fall in line. It's a subset of "their best since Some Girls" syndrome.

The return to 70s Bowie narrative was pretty big with that album. It wasn't just one critic.

Bowie invited it a bit himself w/that album cover.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/devendra-banhart-gets-back-to-basics-on-new-album-121546/

― President Keyes, Friday, November 16, 2018 12:01 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Back to the basics of never writing a single memorable song.

and being a creepazoid

"return to form" is distinct from "back to the basics" anyway - the former can just mean they're back to being good again, while the latter taps into the whole "four people in a room" trope.

exactly

and I stand corrected re: The Next Day, I don't remember any of that in the press release. Reviews seemed tepid at best.

I know this isn’t the thread for it, but allow me to tip my cap to another fun (and frequent) cliché:

“This group is an open forum for anything,” the Men’s Nick Chiericozzi told Pitchfork in a 2012 interview. At the time, the singer/guitarist was speaking to the stylistic eclecticism of the band’s third album, Open Your Heart, the record where the Brooklyn quartet first embraced the idea that the most punk thing a punk band can do is not sound “punk.” They had added a permanent lap steel player; before long, they were making records in the woods and hiring horn sections.

^^That reminds me of something Corin Tucker (iirc) said about Sleater-Kinney embracing Classic Rock because she got bored listening to Modern Rock radio during commutes, so she switched to the Classic Rock station and started hearing all these Zep, Rush, Yes etc. songs that were long and had interesting time signatures that "...felt more Punk Rock [in their daring]...than the new stuff so-called 'Modern/Punk' station."

The Kooks (yes, they still exist) have a new album out.

https://musicfeeds.com.au/features/the-kooks/

"... I think this album, it was just time to go back to four guys in a room, just loving playing music together. I think you can hear that."

Embrace had a new album out, I imagine most of you were unaware of that though.

http://theseventhhex.com/post/169341912015/embrace-interview

"The studio dynamic was much more relaxed this time around and we went back to a much simpler palette."

"Completing this album felt like quintessential Embrace really - it’s just five guys in a room doing what they love."

What is the Sleater Kinney album that sounds most like Zep/Yes/Rush?

The Woods

Though that's a bit overblown, SK always sounds like themselves

I like SK just fine, but that’s like asking which of an art major’s sketches looks most like Rembrandt etc

Oh, I do have a copy of The Woods somewhere. It was OK.

Bob Mould on the new Interpol:

When I heard “The Rover,” which they led with, I was knocked out by it. It just sounded perfect. It brought back all of the urgency. They’re sort of a precise band, but I like when it frays a little bit. The record had a lot of precision but a lot of frayed edges, too. I was like, “Yes, this sounds like a band, in a room, making a record.”

From U2: A Musical Biography
David Kootnikoff · 2010

Larry wanted to return to basics and go back to working with just four guys in a room.

I like to imagine that's from the chapter on the 'Pop' album. "Shut up Larry, we've told you we're not doing that"

Sadly not. It's from the post-Pop 'All That You Can't Leave Behind' chapter entitled A Sort of Homecoming