Follow-ups that could almost be part twos of classic albums

Suffer + No Control

Seventeen Seconds and Faith, in fact they released those in America as a double album called Happily Ever After.

Disagree with 90% of these. Even on Trout Mask/Decals, which I agree with, Decals has one guitar instead of two, has two drummers on some tracks and marimba on others and was 'arranged' by Zoot Horn Rollo instead of Drumbo.

Tom is correct. If these were, in fact, double albums, they wouldn't feel of a piece in most instances.

Tusk feels like a natural extension of Rumors to me.

I'd say the 1975 s/t and Rumours make a better pair but I don't know if I'm just reaching because of the very similar cover art (think that plays a big part in me mentally grouping albums together in general).

17 Seconds and Faith utterly different records to me, in sound, mood and content

Metallica have done this twice - Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets are pretty much mirror images of each other, and then there's Load/ReLoad, in which case a lot of the tracks were literally leftovers from the earlier sessions that they reworked (sometimes a lot, sometimes not very much) after touring the first album.

Also, how am I the first person to mention the first three Ramones albums, which might as well have been the product of a single marathon session?

John Martyn: Sold Air / Inside Out.

Also Ziggy /Aladdin Sane maybe

Scritti Politti: Cupid & Psyche 85 + Provision

I don't agree w the Built to Spill ones tbh

Yeah, you're right.

#1 Record/Radio City. I heard them first on the two-fer CD and it's just one big album to me.

Yes, that's another one I don't agree with.

Black Saint and the Sinner Lady and Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus, but may be cheating as a few of the tracks on the latter album were recorded during the Black Saint sessions.

The second and third This Mortal Coil albums are like this (the first one is more of a stand-alone kind of thing).

Savage Republic Customs to Jamhiriya. Slightly different instrumentation thanks to difference in location.
Has one track that's a bit of a reworking

Disagree with 90% of these. Even on Trout Mask/Decals, which I agree with, Decals has one guitar instead of two, has two drummers on some tracks and marimba on others and was 'arranged' by Zoot Horn Rollo instead of Drumbo.

TV on the Radio -- Dear Science and Nine Types of Light. The latter is not as consistently creative as the former, but they are of a piece in terms of the overall sound, and the high points on NToL are just about as high as those of Science.

I don't see much talk about TVotR on ILM - how do folks around here rate them?

The Who does not have a classic/follow-up in their discography, but if all their planned/cancelled albums were released at the time, they'd have several: Sell Out followed by Who's For Tennis; Who's Next followed by Rock Is Dead -- Long Live Rock (or just any collection of all the '71-'72 singles, b-sides, and Who's Next leftovers); maybe even Tommy followed by the 7ft. Wide Car, 6ft. Wide Garage EP.

i mean if you ignore lifehouse/who's next, tommy to quadrophenia seems to fit

kinda agree w Tom D here tbh most of these nominations make no sense to me

the ones that make the most sense are the irish twin albums that come out within 12 months of each other and had some songs recorded at the same sessions

i mean if you ignore lifehouse/who's next, tommy to quadrophenia seems to fit

― jakey mo collier (voodoo chili), Friday, August 30, 2019 11:04 AM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I dunno, they sound pretty different -- Tommy is austere compared to Quadrophenia's synth- and horn-heavy arrangements. I actually think Tommy and the cancelled 1970 EP is a stretch, as the EP tracks have more electric guitar than all of Tommy.

Some members of The Band considered Big Pink and "the brown album" to be basically the same album.

xp yeah i don't actually think tommy/quad fits, but i was thinking of it asa hollywood-type blockbuster sequel (bigger, longer, etc)

Yeah, I can see it from that perspective. And that was part of the original intention of Lifehouse, to make an exponentially more ambitious and larger-scale Tommy-type project.

Sgt Pepper/Magical Mystery Tour

?

Kimono My House -> Propaganda makes a lot of sense

Yes to the Band and the Beatles.

The almost complete absence of Chris Bell on Radio City kind of makes the first two Big Star records seem quite as much of a unit IMO

"I don't see much talk about TVotR on ILM - how do folks around here rate them?"

I love them, I think there's a fair number of people who feel the same. They only release an album every three years or so though and they're not huge so there isn't tons of active discussion on them.

xp yeah, I kind of ruled out the Big Star albums for that reason, but at the same time I do often forget which album some of the songs are on, so a case could probably be made.

challenge: propose album companions that were not made sequentially. example: the Manics' Holy Bible and Journal for Plague Lovers

This is pretty hard! I guess Guero was kind of thought of as an attempt to get back to the Odelay sound, but they're pretty different. Solo Piano I and II by Chilly Gonzales, but that's cheating. Maybe I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One and I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass?

Another (possibly too easy) challenge: follow-ups to to classics that are of similar quality but don't sound the same at all. Something/Anything -> A Wizard, a True Star might be the best example I can think of. Or OK Computer -> Kid A. The Blue Album and Pinkerton, Definitely Maybe and What's the Story would probably work. The first two (or more) De La Soul albums. Lonesome Crowded West and The Moon and Antarctica.

Weezer's Green album is odd as it sounds like it could have preceeded the blue album due it's relative simplicity/streamlined approach (see also: The Strokes 'Room On Fire')

Bands generally get tighter / more professional over time, rather than sloppier, no? Hard to imagine blue coming after green (Is This It also sounds like a classic debut album to me).

Drive-By Truckers Decoration Day and The Dirty South are very much of a piece.

Fly Like An Eagle and Book of Dreams. I think they were recorded at the same time as well.

Elvis Presley, From Elvis in Memphis (1969) was the classic album, and then his next release was the double lp From Memphis to Vegas, From Vegas to Memphis from which one disc was material taken from the same sessions as From Elvis in Memphis

...and the sameness of the two releases was acknowledged by RCA when they basically reissued all of that material on one CD called The Memphis Record in the '80s

Beach Boys: Smiley Smile & Wild Honey; Sunflower & Surf's Up

Elvis Presley, From Elvis in Memphis (1969) was the classic album, and then his next release was the double lp From Memphis to Vegas, From Vegas to Memphis from which one disc was material taken from the same sessions as From Elvis in Memphis

...and the sameness of the two releases was acknowledged by RCA when they basically reissued all of that material on one CD called The Memphis Record in the '80s

The studio material from From Memphis... was also later re-released as Back in Memphis. (The live stuff was re-released as From the International Hotel.)

What's most amazing to me about that batch of material is that "Suspicious Minds" was a non-LP single.

It's kind of a constant refrain in Elvis's career that his non-movie LPs might have sold more and been more esteemed if RCA would've attached the concurrent singles to them

Apropos of From Elvis In Memphis, I see there is a new release of related outtakes called American Sound 1969, which seems to contain more tracks than even Big Star’s Complete Third.

Yeah, it's on Spotify - I started digging into it. It's a lot like the Stooges Fun House box - take after take after take of the same song, until Elvis starts laughing or loses his place and they count it off again. Not super-edifying.

I think I bought those two Big Star LPs around the same time and didn’t fully absorb either one before listening to the other one. It took me quite a while to enjoy listening to either one from beginning to end as a whole without zoning out and just focusing on individual tracks I liked, so I barely thought This Album and That Album, just This Track and That Track. For years I downplayed Chris Bell’s role and figured he was just the founder and foil for creative genius Alex (who horned in and took over) and his leaving didn’t make much difference anyway. Now that I have, um, refined my opinion and improved my understanding, I feel that on the second album they are still to some extent channeling Chris- not sure Alex ever wrote or made records the same way before or since- so his departure made much less of a difference than might have been expected, despite sonic/production changes mentioned upthread.

Reproduction and Travelogue by The Human League feel this way to me. It definitely helps that I bought them on the same day.

Same goes for The Divine Comedy's Liberation and Promenade which I got around the same time. They were recorded and released very close together with extremely similar artwork. Promenade might be a bit more developed (the production is better for a start), but I always put them together. Especially as Neil never topped those albums.

XP John Fry claimed about a third of Radio City was Chris co-writes that he declined to take credit for.

Thanks. Was just about to make another pass through the Bruce Eaton 33 1/3 book on Radio City to refresh my memory about things like that.

Chris co-wrote “O My Soul” and “Back Of A Car” but, in what John Fry describes as “horsetrading,” Chris gave full credit to Alex in return for keeping full credit on two other songs, “There’s A Light” and “Got Kind Of Lost.” Chris later sent a letter to John Fry asking for credit on “those two songs” but didn’t say which, although Andy and Alex knew. All four songs were recorded on an early Radio City demo that went missing.

Both of those last two, all four songs actually, can be heard on the Live At Lafayette’s Music Room album which came out last year.

Boston --> Don't Look Back