Guides/A Riffiter guide
Transition albums: when a band becomes a different band
Ten records that mark the exact moment an artist torched the old sound.
A transition album is the record where an artist abandons an established sound for a new one. This guide tracks ten of the most dramatic pivots in music history, from Radiohead's Kid A (2000) to Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden (1988) and Swans' Children of God (1987).
Most bands evolve gradually. A few do it in one violent lurch, an album that makes everything before it sound like a different group's work. These records cost their makers fans, label support, sometimes whole careers. They're also where the most interesting discographies hinge.
Listen to the album before and the album after each of these, and you'll hear a door closing and another one opening.
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Spirit of Eden
★ 4.4 · 8—In 1986 Talk Talk were a hit synth-pop act; in 1988 they delivered an improvised, hushed, jazz-inflected record with no obvious songs. EMI sued. Spirit of Eden is now credited with inventing post-rock.
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Children of God
Be the first to rate—The 1987 double album where New York's most brutal noise band discovered melody, acoustic guitars and Jarboe's voice. Everything Swans became (including their monumental 2010s second act) was made possible here.
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Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Be the first to rate—An alt-country band deconstructs itself in real time: static, drift, heartbreak. The label rejected it; Wilco streamed it free in 2001, got dropped, and were re-signed by another arm of the same corporation. The album made them a great American band.
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Tilt
Be the first to rate—A 1960s teen idol re-emerges in 1995 with blocks of orchestral dread and a voice like a sermon at the end of the world. Tilt completed the strangest reinvention in pop history, from Walker Brothers heartthrob to avant-garde composer.
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Low
★ 5.0 · 4—Bowie flees Los Angeles and cocaine for Berlin, splits an album between fractured art-pop and Eno-assisted instrumentals, and releases it in 1977 over his label's objections. Side two alone seeded ambient, post-punk and a thousand film scores.
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Paul's Boutique
★ 4.5 · 1—From frat-rap pranksters to sample-collage auteurs in one move. Paul's Boutique (1989) flopped on release, then became the Sgt. Pepper of sampling, built from hundreds of sources in a way the law would never permit again.
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Currents
★ 4.3 · 8—Kevin Parker trades psych-rock guitars for disco basslines and heartbreak synths. Currents (2015) alienated the rock faithful and made him a festival headliner and pop producer, the rare pivot that worked completely on its own terms.
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The Age of Adz
Be the first to rate—After the orchestral Americana of Illinois, Stevens returned in 2010 with glitching electronics and songs about love, madness and the apocalypse. The banjo crowd flinched; the album reads now as the hinge of his whole catalogue.
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Bringing It All Back Home
Be the first to rate—The original heresy. In 1965 Dylan plugged in, split an album between electric sneer and acoustic visions, and was booed by his own audience for it. Every transition album since walks through the door he kicked open.
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