What bands do you still like despite abrupt change in direction?

Cafe Society
1

Opposite of this thread. Because while I’ve drifted away from bands, it’s never been because of a sea change (rather, because of a lack of quality or originality.)

But there have been several bands that I’ve stayed with despite a pretty abrupt shift in direction.

The Promise Ring. Their 4 LPs have been at least 3 major changes in direction, if not 4:

30° Everywhere: Emocore. (In other words, hardcore punk but with emo singing and lyrics.)

Nothing Feels Good: Pretty much a clone of Weezer’s more polished efforts.

Very Emergency: Back to deliberately sloppy punk, but this one is fast and upbeat where 30° Everywhere was slower and muddier.

Wood/Water: Mostly soft rock, singer-songwriter-ish with a retro-70s on several tracks.

I like all incarnations of this band.

Panic (!) at the Disco. Their second major album went in a more Baroque, Beatle-esque way than their first. No more angst, really, and I initially didn’t like it but the singing and music was so good that it grew on me.

Then, half of them left the band and they went back to their previous sound. Their third album sounds like what the followup to the first should have been. There is some angst as well, but it’s not as deliberately unfocused and random as the first.

The next two only sort of count because they made the extremely different albums before I became a fan:

Coheed and Cambria. While their last album was radically different from their second, the changes were so gradual that none of them were a sea change. But not so their first album (confusingly entitled Second Stage Turbine Blade versus their second (again, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth 3). SSTB is a somewhat emocore foray into sloppy yet melodic punk, whereas In Keeping Secrets is pretty much Nu-Metal. (Subsequent albums would continuously strip out both the alternative and classic-progressive elements from the Nu-Metal sound until their last album was just generic hard rock, but at no one point was there a radical change.) While I don’t like their last album too much, I like both sides of the nu-metal versus emo divide in Coheed’s beginning.

Elvis Costello. I’m not up on a lot of later Elvis chronology, so there might be some departures I am missing, but This Years Model is a pretty big break from My Aim is True. The former is a perfect encapsulation of the cynical angry young man playing non-electronic New Wave, while the latter is a deliberate exercise in retro rock n roll. Even most of his signature wordplay is informed by what was then classic rock and country, leaving an inner core of cynicism you can barely get to by scratching off the veneer of pastiche. But I like both albums nonetheless.

2

Rush has gone through many phases and I while I have liked some more than others, I am still a fan.

3

Bright Eyes has moved away from their angst-laden emo years (best captured in 2000’s Fever & Mirrors) and are now mining more of a folk-country Americana vibe as shown by I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning (2005) and Cassadaga (2007), as well as lead man Conor Oberst’s own self-titled album in 2008.

If anything, I may actually like the new stuff better than the old, but it’s all excellent.

4

Anathema went from being doom/death metal to atmospheric alternative rock, and stayed brilliant with it. There’s quite a few metal bands that have made some sort of change, but these are a very obvious example, and one who were good in both periods.

5

I don’t know how drastic all the changes were incrementally, but comparing from their first album, to their 2000s output, there’s been quite a shift in the work of Wire. Pink Flag was straight-up punk, Chairs Missing had the post-punk sound, 154 started employing elements and some of the poppiness of New Wave, Ideal Copy kind of kept with the post-punk/New Wave sound, and then A Bell Is a Cup Until It is Struck became was fairly slick in its production and more radio-friendly melodies and New Wave Sound. Then I kind of lose track of them for a few years, (where they lose the drummer, and record under the name Wir) until their reformation in 2002 with the Read & Burn EPs and Send (which is mostly the Read & Burn EPs), where they go to a heavy, repetitive almost industrial sound. Object 47 returns them to a listener-friendly sound. No clue on their most recent Red Barked Tree, though. Haven’t listened to it.

I also actually thought that Smashing Pumpkins were good through Adore, where they fired Jimmy Chamberlain and turned into a down- and mid-tempo electronic-influenced band, but then turned into a parody of themselves when they picked up the hard rock, and Jimmy Chamberlain, with Machina. And I refuse to call anything past that album “Smashing Pumpkins.”

Radiohead are another that went from straight-up Brit Pop with Pablo Honey and The Bends to the darker, more experimental sounds of OK Computer, followed by the more electronic and complex songwriting of Kid A and Amnesiac. I thought they successfully made the transition from a fun pop band to perhaps a bit too self-serious experimental rock band.

6

Wish they’d do one last album like the first one… :frowning:

7

For me it’s The Clash - from angst punk to rockabilly, ska, reggae, dub, gospel, electronica, and hip hop. I pretty much love every iteration of the band, and I even like some songs off of the hated “that’s not really a Clash album,” Cut the Crap.

8

Spinal Tap, a group I loved ever since I saw them at the Electric Banana in the village (but don’t look for that club anymore, it’s gone).