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Don’t You Hate When Bands Only Make One Album?

Ah, yes. The ol' "One and Done."

Just recently I learned that a Swedish band I loved called the Honeydrips broke up – in 2010. A simple Google search delivered this harsh news, and it hurt. Not because I listen to them incessantly, but because they (really, it was just Mikael Carlsson) released just one album in 2009, a loner’s manifesto called Here Comes the Future. Upon reading Carlsson’s statement that “I’ve said everything I wanted to say,” it hit me like a low blow to the groin: I will never hear any more of their beatific, electronic, Scando indie pop ever again.

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Released by the radical-thinking Sincerely Yours label, whose roster is often surrounded in total ambiguity and unusual catalogue items (a MySpace page, a bulletproof vest, limited T-shirts only the King of Sweden could afford), Here Comes the Future never found much of an audience outside of the label’s obsessive completists. As a greedy music snob, maybe that’s why I love it so much. But more than anything, this news got me thinking about all the times I’ve been disappointed to learn that an artist has just packed it in after one album. More importantly, one album I love.

But Sincerely Yours added a sentiment in the press release that rang true to me: “Sometime, somewhere, someone will pick up a record called Here Comes the Future by the Honeydrips. This person will not quite know what to expect.” This has happened to me on a number of occasions, even with some of these albums. And maybe it was for the best with some of them. You never know what bloated, egotistical artistic statement, or half-assed, contract-fulfilling turd they might have turned in for that difficult sophomore album.

Here is a list of 12 more debut albums released by artists that couldn’t keep it together long enough to make a follow-up for one reason or another, be it tragedy, hatred, failure or laziness.

The Amps

Most people think the Amps were actually the Breeders. It’s an easy assumption considering Kim Deal was the chief architect of both bands, and they sounded exactly the same. After the Breeders burned out following

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Last Splash

’s unexpected commercial success, Kim formed the Amps in a bid to help her twin sis Kelley get off the smack. Kelley ended up in rehab, so Kim went it alone at first as a solo, then brought in the Breeders’ drummer Jim MacPherson and two other dudes. At first they were called Tammy Ampersand, but shortened it to the Amps. As much as I love the Breeders, I’d still probably play the Amps’ one and only album

Pacer

over even

Last Splash

most days. Admittedly more lo-fi than her previous recordings,

Pacer

feels organic, live and rushed in the best way possible. “Tipp City” is a perfect slobberingly drunk anthem, which if you think you don’t know it you will once you hear it.

I guess because

Pacer

failed to replicate the sales of

Last Splash

, Kim just ended up turning them into the Breeders. Still,

Deerhunter are known fans of the Amps, and have covered “Bragging Party” on occasion. So according to that, I’m not crazy.

Odds of a second album? Improbable. I imagine it’s the furthest thing from Kim Deal’s mind, now that she’s quit Pixies and reunited the Breeders‘ classic line-up. Plus, the Amps didn’t even gain a cult status, so why would she?

Clor

If you’ve never heard of Brixton’s Clor, well, you are part of the 99 percent. The band’s sole self-titled album was so unheard that it ranked #1 on

NME

's “100 greatest albums you've never heard.” Released back in 2005, they had everything going for them with a post-punk/electro-pop sound that echoed the UK’s musical landscape. But you wouldn’t mistake

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Clor

for any other album at the time. These robotic love songs are terse, complex, heavily melodic and a bit unhinged at times, like Devo and Sparks having a weird-off. Sadly, they broke up less than a year after their LP release, over creative differences, just as it was coming out in the U.S. In their final statement, Clor took the words right out of my mouth: “they leave a jewel of album for future generations to discover among the land-fill and rock detritus of so many of their peers.”

Odds of a second album? Never say never. Guitarist Luke Smith has tasted some success as a producer for Foals and Shitdisco, but I don’t see why it couldn’t happen down the line.

Comet

Arguably the most obscure band on this list, Comet from Dallas, Texas really only mattered to me because a friend wouldn’t shut up about them all throughout 1997. He was right too. Though it was hard enough to find at the time, their debut,

Chandelier Musings

had a lot going for it. The album was released by Dedicated, which had Spiritualized, Chapterhouse and Cranes on its roster, and was produced by David Baker, former frontman of Mercury Rev. Hiring Baker wasn’t a coincidence; Comet shared a lot of the same sonic ambition as Mercury Rev, and there are many moments on

Chandelier Musings

that actually sound like them, as well as a handful of shoegaze and slowcore bands, not to mention Galaxie 500. It was a bad van accident that led to their break up, and not long after drummer Josh Garza formed Secret Machines, who definitely fulfilled Comet’s promise.

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Odds of a second album? Not impossible. The Stone brothers reformed Comet in 2005 and released the Feathers From the Wing EP. But that only lasted a year before they packed it in again.

Desaparecidos

A friend of mine, whose name rhymes with Lamian and whose band’s name rhymes with Tucked Up, always teases the shit out of me because I used to like a few emo bands way back when. He Twitter bullies me on a regular basis, but I will stand by my never-ending love for the one and only Desaparecidos album,

Read Music/Speak Spanish

. Before he became a super-emo-star as Bright Eyes, Conor Oberst released this one-off punk record so he could vent his anger over shit like Starbucks and strip malls. I will always believe that he made a

huge

mistake going with Bright Eyes over Desaparecidos. I figure by now, he could be playing arenas with Foo Fighters supporting them, but no, he preferred boring people with folk over rocking people’s socks off. And that dismissive

Pitchfork

review still really pissed me off.

Odds of a second album? Excellent. The band reunited last year and have released a few 7”s, but part of me hopes they don’t, so I can preserve my one and only treasured emo moment.

The Exploding Hearts

Sadly, the Exploding Hearts should never have made this list. At the beginning of 2003, they seemed like a band that would be playing well into their 50s, still fitting into those beaten leather jackets and skin-tight jeans. But on July 20 of that year, three-quarters of the Portland band - Adam “Baby” Cox, Jeremy “Kid Killer” Gage and Matthew “Matt Lock” Fitzgerald - were tragically killed in a motor accident, when their van flipped near Eugene, Oregon on the way home from a gig in San Francisco. (Guitarist Terry Six miraculously survived with minor injuries, along with manager Rachelle Ramos.) This was just three months after the release of their one and only studio album,

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Guitar Romantic

. I know punk died a painful death long ago, but no one told these dudes, who were all in their early 20s, when they were making this album. No contemporary punk album can sound original, but the Hearts pretended that they were there in 1977. And so the album’s throwback sound feels as genuine as a tribute can get. The band was only two years old at the time of their demise, and I can only imagine they had many more albums planned ahead.

Odds of a second album? Impossible. In 2006, a compilation of singles and unreleased tracks was released called Shattered. It’s actually a pretty solid follow-up and as close as we’ll ever get to another album.

The Hardship Post

I got into music as a teen around the time East Coast Canada was having a musical explosion. Bands like Sloan, Eric’s Trip, Jale, and Thrush Hermit were gaining international acclaim, and Halifax was largely considered “the next Seattle.” Not every band in the scene was from Halifax though. The Hardship Post were from St. John’s, Newfoundland, and, yes, they are the coolest newfie band ever. First releasing an EP on Sloan’s über-cool murderecords label, they soon followed Eric’s Trip and Jale to a deal with Sub Pop, which released their one and only LP, 1995’s

Somebody Spoke

. A lot of people felt it didn’t live up to the fizzy grunge of their previous EP

Hack

, as the band widened their scope. But there’s something about that album that always keeps me coming back to my vinyl copy for the last 18 years.

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Odds of a second album? Bad. I doubt the band’s name has been mentioned by anyone in years and according to the internet, all three members appear to have vanished.

Life Without Buildings

I’m a sucker for anything that falls into the genres of shoegaze or the Fall. Yeah, that’s right, to me the Fall are their own genre. After 100,000 or so albums they deserve it. And so when I first heard Life Without Buildings, I couldn’t help but notice a heavy influence, as if Mark E. Smith was haunting the body of singer Sue Tompkins. Her stream of consciousness vocal delivery was Smith-ian, though with some actual ability to carry melody. The band, a guitar/bass/drums set-up followed a pretty faithful post-punk template, with some complex rhythms and choppy chord progressions, and yet their pop sensibility was sharper than most of their revivalist counterparts. Sadly, 2001’s Any Other City would be the only longplayer they would make. Even sadder was that Any Other City didn’t really find it’s following, a bona fide cult one by now, until years later. Perhaps this is what inspired the release of 2007’s live album,

Live at the Annandale Hotel

, a laudable final chapter that gave all the late fans an idea of what they missed from LWB’s electric performances.

Odds of a second album? Without a new singer, not bloody likely. Guitarist Robert Johnston told Muso’s Guide that the band split up because Tompkins didn’t actually want to be in a band anymore. And without her, what’s the point?

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Lift To Experience

Like most human beings, I don’t usually want to hear double albums let alone one that has a concept. Make that especially double concept albums with any religious themes at work. But Denton, Texas trio Lift To Experience won me over with their monster 93-minute debut,

The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads

. I promised myself it was the only exception and nine years later I’ve kept my word. But this album, whoa. Without getting too wordy, the concept is this: the apocalypse has arrived and Texas is chosen as the Promised Land. Josh T. Pearson’s personal religious exploration is riveting, profound and hilarious (check out the piss-taking No Limit artwork), but it’s the quiet-loud crescendos, equal parts post-rock and shoegaze, that give the music its almighty gravitas. Produced by Robin Guthrie and Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins, the two were so enthralled with this band that they signed them to Bella Union on the spot immediately after seeing them play SXSW.

Odds of a second album? Not the greatest. Pearson is currently releasing murder ballads for Mute Records, and has admitted that Texas-Jerusalem was originally the first of three parts. But it doesn’t sound like he’s ready to revisit the band that made him lose his mind any time soon.

The Organ

It’s only fitting that the best Smiths soundalike band would be female. Think about all of the male bands you’ve heard trying to weakly ape Morrissey’s fluttering call (admirable effort, Gene), and then it turns out five 20-something lesbians from Vancouver, of all places, emulated it best. That was the Organ. Formed in 2001, the band underwent considerable setbacks in order to release their lone album,

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Grab That Gun

, which eventually saw a release in 2004 – via Chad Kroeger’s 604 Records. Yes, that Chad Kroeger. Avril Lavigne’s goateed, Jesus-locked douche of a husband, who’s also in Nickelback. Lumped in with compatible new wave-leaning bands like Interpol and the Killers, the Organ felt destined to find similar international success. But touring and drinking wore them out, and well, they became a rock’n’roll cliché in 2006. Worst of all, they announced their break up on MySpace. Two years later, singer/producer/founder Katie Sketch revealed to

The Lipster

that a needed break that Mr. Nickelback wouldn’t allow signaled their end. And then 604 released an EP of demos aptly called

Thieves

, against the band’s wishes. To this day, Sketch says because of the band’s contract with 604, she cannot release music even on her own. Boooo!

Odds of a second album? Not good. With Kroeger’s stranglehold on their recordings, they’d have to change the band’s name as well as their own individual names. God, he’s such an asshole!

Test Icicles

Most people couldn’t get past the ball-joke name or the racket critics reduced to “fashioncore.” But in my mid-20s I loved just about anything that resembled the Blood Brothers, especially when it was English teenagers brewing some evil dance-punk, metal, hardcore and computer noise hybrid. I never expected Test Icicles to last more than two years and they didn’t. They were the textbook “flash in the pan.” But their album,

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For Screening Purposes Only

, was surprisingly well-received and I can still hear why. The energy is explosive, the songwriting is immature but deceptively brilliant, and well, what do you have to show for when you were 19? Touring nearly killed them and obviously, Dev Hynes had other things on his mind, so they disbanded five months after the album’s release.

Odds of a second album? Real bad. Hynes is on top of the world as a producer (Solange, Sky Ferreira) and as Blood Orange, whose new album is gonna make him a big star. You’ll probably hear a brand new *NSYNC album with JT before anything new from Test Icicles.

The Unicorns

In Canada, Montreal’s The Unicorns are often still regarded as “the band that could’ve but never did.” After scoring an 8.9 on

Pitchfork

with 2003’s

Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?

the trio were all set to become Montreal’s flagbearers for the indie rock’s renaissance going on in Canada. Yeah, they could’ve been Arcade Fire! Okay, maybe they were way too screwy and goofy to become Grammy winners, but their songs like “Sea Ghost” and “I Was Born (A Unicorn)” have two of the biggest hooks never to make it to radio. Alas, we only got that one album from them (dismiss their throwaway 2004 EP,

) before they cracked under the pressure one year later. When the band posted “THE UNICORNS ARE DEAD, (R.I.P.)” on their website, I guess they meant it.

Odds of a second album: Pretty good. Nick Thorburn just released his fifth album as Islands, but last year he told Hour that he’s “always open” to a reunion.

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Zwan

Sometimes I feel like I live in a universe where I’m the only person that enjoyed the one and only Zwan album. Which is weird, because

Mary Star of the Sea

would be the third best Smashing Pumpkins album (tied with

Adore

), had he just kept the name. And we all know there are still plenty of Pumpkins fans kicking around. Zwan was a primo supergroup that aside from Billy Corgan, consisted of David Pajo (Slint, Papa M), Matt Sweeney (Chavez, Skunk), drop-dead-gorgeous session/tour musician Paz Lenchantin, and original Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin. That is a supergroup. But according to Corgan, members were more interested in acting like a clichéd rock’n’roll band than playing in one. He accused them of heroin use, crossing borders carrying, having sex with each other in public, and Pajo of sleeping with producer Bjorn Thorsrud’s GF. Which all sounds amazing! Of course, they all denied the allegations, and I imagine it was more of a disregard for Corgan’s bossy routine, but he ended things after their world tour. Still, having heard

Oceania

and witnessing it live, I can’t but help think Billy would be better off with Zwan than this bastardized version of Smashing Pumpkins he’s doing.

Odds of a second album? Dreadful. Billy’s ego is far too colossal to allow such a thing. I suggest the other guys reform Zwan as Black Zwan, write songs about Darren Aronofsky’s freaky film, and hire James Iha to sing. Boo-yah!

Honorable mention of bands that split up immediately after a second album: Adorable, Hotel Mexico, Jonathan Fire*Eater, Kenickie, New Kingdom. Cam Lindsay is on Twitter but has only tweeted once - @yasdnilmac