Debut albums have several advantages over what follows in a band’s catalogue. Not least that the songs making the cut for the final tracklisting have been honed over time, forged in the fire of live gigging. The downside is that the artist might be unfamiliar with the recording studio environment and unable to realise their potential amid an unfamiliar world of faders, knobs and mic placements. In some cases, they haven’t yet found ‘their sound’ or been given the freedom by a wary record company to make ‘their record’.
There are many reasons why so many bands’ finest record is also their first. And many examples of acts who’ve never managed to scale those heights again throughout lengthy careers. We’ll leave the question of ‘why?’ for another day – we’re here to celebrate the great debut album. Over the next eight pages, we’re in the heady thrall of artists who’ve delivered a fully realised work from the outset – and in some cases things went downhill from there…
60 THE STREETS