Best pair of albums by the same artist/band in a single calendar year

Amon Duul II, 1972: Carnival in Babylon and Wolf City
Alice Coltrane, 1971: Journey Into Satchidananda and Universal Consciousness

The Idiot would have been a 1976 release if not for Bowie holding it up

Yeah, I think Atom Heart's record of 7 great albums in 1994 (amongst the 10+ albums he made that year) is almost unbeatable, at least in electronic music.

Underworld from '93-'94 might have that topped in terms of sheer amount of great music - the 5 CD dubnobass reissue doesn't even cover everything

Xxpost: my bad I searched iggy pop with no results. Still, no mention of KILL CITY which is magnificent.

Underworld from '93-'94 might have that topped in terms of sheer amount of great music

For those not familiar, they only released one formal album in this time, but breaking down the output of the new lineup of the band in their early years:

warming up in 1992: a neat CDs-worth of 12"s (79 minutes), if you leave out one track they put on the album the next year.
- PLUS 2 CDs worth of remixes for other artists (1 hr 45)

1993: a tidy 48-minute LPsworth of four songs, on 2 12"s. (Two remixes of one of 'em could take up 13 minutes on a CD reissue.)
- PLUS 3 CDs worth of remixes for other artists, nearly all over ten minutes each (3 hr 10) {one of these is from 1994 but let's compile them together}

1994, barely: a real actual 72-minute CD-length double album, released three weeks into the year
and 2 CDs worth (2 hr 20) of B-sides - up to 20 minutes long - and a couple of self-remixes, almost all probably also recorded in 1993

- the 5 CD dubnobass reissue doesn't even cover everything

Across this and a couple of other archival projects c. 2014, they also released over two and a half hours (3 CDs worth) of demos recorded 1991-93.

Well, if non-album tracks, tracks made for other people and even unreleased tracks count, then surely Prince outranks most people in this thread? The 1999 box set alone has 4 CDs worth of B-sides and unreleased songs from the same era the album was made, and it doesn't even include stuff he wrote, produced and mostly played the instruments for that was released by other acts, such as The Time and Vanity 6,

Underworld doesn't actually count, I was just annotating, but albums Prince made under other names totally does imo

I think for me the current champion is Sault with '5' and '7' during 2019 (+ 'Untitled' within 13 total months).

(Reading after posting--very happy to see others had the same thought re: Sault.)

holy shit, the two towering pinnacles of my Magnetic Fields binge (The Charm Of The Highway Strip and Holiday) came out within 6 months of each other in 1994!

The close release dates of the two albums meant that some magazines reviewed the albums together, which annoyed Merritt.[7] It has also been speculated that this would have meant consumers would buy one of the two albums, but not both.[7]

oh, foolish consumers if so! but also, lol

imagining an ILM 1994 EOY poll where I get very worked up about them getting votesplit even as Illmatic and Dummy are knocked into surprise 2nd and 3rd place finishes by...Low

Prince in 1982 - 1999/ What Time Is It?/Vanity 6

I know the post specifies "calendar year" but if we just include any 12-month stretch, June 1970 - June 1971 was very good for Tim Hart and Maddy Prior; Hark! The Village Wait and Please to See the King (with Steeleye Span) and Summer Solstice (as a duo)

Also MF DOOM dropping Madvilliany and MM... FOOD in 2004

iirc Holiday was recorded first but some label issue meant it got delayed until after Charm of the Highway Strip (which was their first on Merge)

Help! and Rubber Soul (1965)

Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

The Clash released 5 LPs from December 1979 to December 1980.

The Monkees: More of The Monkees; Headquarters; and Pieces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (All in 1967)

hard to beat Haruomi Hosono doing Paraiso and Cochin Moon in the same year, plus a third of Pacific AND forming YMO and writing a bunch of the first album