Flatline (AKA “The Sophomore Slump”)

Bogus Doug reviews the new Fratellis album.

‘Yah, I know the Frat Boys hate the Fratellis on the basis of politics. Not too helpful. Most of the best artists of our (probably any) generation endorse sucky politics.

The thing is, the first Fratelli album was freaking awesome! It was all punky yet dancy and introspective, yet only to the extent it made it even better. It was pretty much the perfect album for its genre and its age. Infectious. A bevy of hit singles to choose from. Hitting the right notes for the time.

What Doug said.  If I had to reject all music that didn’t agree with me politically, I’d be pretty much down to Ted Nugent, Johnny Ramone (who, drat the luck, never did a solo album), Five for Fighting (if only on foreign policy), maybe Franky Perez, and country-western.

Which is fine – there’s a thin film of C/W I enjoy a lot, and I like to crank “Courtesy Of The Red White And Blue” just on principle to piss off some of my DFL neighbors (and yes, putting boots up miscreats’ asses is  the American way, dadgummit).

But dammit, I like to rock.  And it doesn’t bother me that some of my favorite artists – Springsteen, Pete Townsend) have some of the dumbest politics – because I’ll care about what musicians think about politics about the time I care what John Kline or Michele Bachmann think about music; interesting trivia, perhaps, but not why I hired any of them.

And so – I loved the first Fratellis album.  It was…fun.  I enjoyed it.

So did Doug:

I listened to the Fratelli’s initial offering so often I almost wore out my headphones.

“Flathead” was one of my favorite singles of the past five years (and there aren’t many).

And the new one?

And… what the heck happened?!

All at once there’s nothing threatening. Nothing challenging. Nothing interesting. It’s all so safe… so formulized… And the weird thing is the formulas don’t seem to follow the previous album at all. They’re some kind of bland “this should be more accessible” formula only a soulless studio drone might have preferred. Makes the whole thing tedious. Seriously.

…I’m having a hard time thinking why I would subject myself to a listening of their next album again without payment.

And that’ll be the last we hear of them.  There was a time in pop music where an act that had a great (or at least hot-selling) debut album might be forgiven a sophomore slump; the third album could save ’em.  It was frightfully common; an artist would spend years getting material together for the debut – and have a year to get the second ready, while touring and doing oceans of blow.  It was almost inevitable; the second album almost always disappointed, both artistically and in sales.

And the third act was what made a lot of artists; Springsteen’s first album sold poorly, and had one song (“Blinded by the Light”, an Van-Morrison-like R’nB romp that Manfred Man re-tooled into an ode to depression) that grazed the bottom of the Top100.  The followup didn’t do much better.  Today, the label would have dumped him.  32 years ago, he got the chance to do Born to Run.
No more.  Record companies, desperate as their revenues are plunging, need the hits now. There are no second chances.

Ah, well.  We’ll always have “Flathead”.

One thought on “Flatline (AKA “The Sophomore Slump”)

  1. There’s lots of bands that had hot debuts and then just fizzled on the encore. The Knack and Hootie and the Blowfish come to mind.

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