Please note that the poster did not capitalize “the”
Ah, good - then the Pixies still work :). No Kim Deal, no Pixies far as I’m concerned. Her backing vocals even on albums where she was less prevalent are still essential to making the band gel. They could maybe replace Lovering and get away with it, but otherwise the whole was more than the sum of the parts.
Completely agree; I liked the proper production and lyrics you could hear, but above all Warehouse was just a damn fine set of songs. This isn’t always a popular opinion among Replacements fans, but similarly I think that All Shook Down was a fine swan-song.
The Band’s soundtrack to their film The Last Waltz marks their end and its certainly a highpoint. One of the best music docu-movies ever made imho.
Islandswas released about the same time but that was mostly unreleased stuff recorded years earlier. Does anyone consider that their last album?
Jericho is from the partially reformed band almost 20 years later.
I’m not sure if Sky Full of Holes is the last Fountains of Wayne album or not. But if it is, I’d say their final effort was a good one.
The Beach Boys’ 50th anniversary album, “That’s Why God Made the Radio”, debuted at #3 in 2012 on the Billboard charts. This was their highest debuting studio album ever. The album is no “Pet Sounds” but still achieved a great commercial success. Unfortunately, the wheels came off the bus at the end of their 50th anniversary tour (Google “Brian Wilson fired” for details) but the album still holds its own among Beach Boys fans.
Is “Coda” not considered a “real” Led Zep album? Doesn’t matter, I wasn’t that impressed with it, anyway.
One more vote for Roxy Music’s Avalon.
Done without Roger Waters. I think of this as Pink Floyd lite and dosn’t fit the OP.
Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake by the Small Faces.
Definitely their high point, Marriott left the band at the end of 1968 and the others split up as a result. Several months later Autumn Stone came out, but it was a fix-up of greatest hits, live tracks and some new material recorded for the next album.
The rest of the band eventually became three of the Faces and I know there’s some dispute as to when the name change happened, but afaik they all thought of it as different band.
No, it’s a post-mortem collection of unreleased odds and ends recorded across their entire career.
For a long time, Alice in Chains final album was the self-titled one(tripod) and it was awesome. Of course, they have now continued without Layne Staley.
ABBA’s final studio album The Visitors is regarded as their best work.
Another vote for The Last Waltz by The Band.
They’re about the only rock ‘n’ roll outfit at that level I can think of who ended well: no half-assed parodies of their former greatness; no bitter lawsuits among band members; no doomed attempts to continue without their main songwriter; no ego wars that ended with a key member flouncing out.
Instead, they just had a massive party with all the best musicians of the day, parted as friends and then happily got on with their individual lives. I bet achieving that after working together for so long is a lot harder than it sounds.
So true, Slade. Well put.
Yeeeahhh…to my understanding it was not such a clean, friendly break. It may not have been public, but apparently the rest of The Band was not quite on the same wavelength with Robbie Robertson breaking everything up and kind of resented it. Apparently there were indeed some genuine hard feelings in the aftermath. And they would reform to tour and cut new albums without Robertson a few years after The Last Waltz. Levon Helm in particular seems to have developed some real issues with Robertson, particularly over copyrights.
Billy Joel’s River of Dreams. True, he did release Fantasies and Delusions, a compilation of his classical compositions, eight years later, but I don’t think that really counts for this discussion. River was his last rock/pop album, and IMHO it’s his best.
The Smiths - Strangeways Here We Come
Queen went out on a high note in 1991 just before Freddie Mercury’s death as a result of AIDS. The album “Innuendo” was pretty good, not their best but a good album nonetheless. Songs like “These Are The Days of Our Lives” and “Don’t Try So Hard” are good. More so considering that Mercury was in the later stages of this terrible disease.
Personally not my most favorite album of theirs, but The Police went out on a high note with their 1983 album “Synchronicity”. Some great songs on their from Sting, Andy and Steve.
Good answers! (Except… “Steve”?)