Ausbury.com

September 16, 2007

Sophomore Slump, Detour Ahead

I enjoyed reading PowerPop’s blog today about bands whose sophomore albums avoided the slump and were better than their debut albums.

I agree wholeheartedly that Elvis Costello’s second album “This Year’s Model” was even better than the wonderful “My Aim Is True”. From what I know about Elvis, I’m sure he had more than 100 songs in the can and learned enough from the recording process of Aim that he was able to make an even better second offering. The pinnacle for me was Imperial Bedroom which is a masterpiece recording.

What other bands would you suggest avoided the sophomore slump? Here are some in the PowerPop genre I came up with:

01. Jason Falkner – Can You Still Feel?
02. All American Rejects – Move Along (I still think Move Along was the best new song in 2006)
03. Bleu – Redhead
04. Collective Soul – Collective Soul
05. Fountains Of Wayne – Utopia Parkway
06. Jellyfish – Spilt Milk
07. Lenny Kravitz – Mama Said
08. Longwave – The Strangest Things (Wake Me Up When It’s Over gets 5 stars on the ipod)
09. Rooney – Calling The World (I’m not counting On The Closed Circuit as their debut)
10. Mae – The Everglow
11. Mew – Frengers
12. Elvis Costello – This Year’s Model

For those of you still not sure what to make of Elvis Costello (I know you’re out there), enjoy this from “This Year’s Model”:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbhIzN9-p0]