Every once in a while, an artist will follow a string of homogenous-sounding records with an absolutely unexpected curveball. Bloc Party are the latest to do it with their breakbeat-influenced, bombastic electronic album Intimacy, which was a surprise release much like Radiohead’s In Rainbows. And it was Radiohead who made perhaps the most famous curveball record over the last decade: released in 2000, Kid A is a blippity bloopity electronic record released after one of modern rock’s most bombastic and powerful statements, OK Computer. But Radiohead was hardly the first band to disappoint fans with high expectations.
Like pretty much everything else in popular music today, the curveball record can be traced back to Dylan and the Beatles. The previously tame Fab Four turned tamed rock and roll into a drug trip with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. And Dylan played a curveball concert at the Newport Folk Festival with and electric band, to the dismay of his acoustic-appreciating audience. And while we remember those artists as revolutionizing music, the reaction was hardly uniform during their time—some of Dylan’s most ardent fans lambasted his move toward electric music.
Today’s curveballs have received the same kind of mixed reactions. Kid A confused just about everyone when it was released in 2000, getting a lot of negative press, but is now considered to be on the same plane as its predecessor. Weezer’s follow-up to their self-titled debut, 1994’s Pinkerton, had the same songwriting fans were used to from Rivers Cuomo, but its sound was much more abrasive. Critics and fans hated it, leading to a lengthy Weezer hiatus. But over the years, Pinkerton gained a cult following, and today many of those same fans and critics consider it Weezer’s finest work.
It’s definitely possible to see a trend: band releases blockbuster album, then follows it up with something completely different. Fans and critics are confused and angry. Years pass, and opinions change. But it’s not always so rosy. In 2006, underground hip-hop producer RJD2 ditched beats and samples for a guitar and a rock band, resulting in 2006’s The Third Hand. In the two years since, fans’ and critics’ reactions have remained overwhelmingly hostile. Mos Def’s move away from hip-hop in the early years of this decade was also met with some hostility.
Earlier this year, Panic at the Disco dropped the exclamation point from their name (not-so-subtle marketing: this was a mature band, with no room in their name for hijinks) and released Pretty. Odd. Tossing away the emo tendencies of their debut and naively embracing old Beatles-inspired clichés, they finally gained a little cred with critics, but their popularity among their chief fan base (fourteen-year-old girls) plummeted.
A curveball record is by no means a guarantee for critical or popular success, but artists will constantly seek to reinvent themselves and push new boundaries. It’s a good thing, too, because if they didn’t, we’d still be sitting around with acoustic guitars singing about tambourine men.
