Whilst it is impossibly easy to fall into undying love with a new band based on their first half a dozen minutes of recorded output, it is equally straightforward to dismiss them without giving them a chance to develop.
Sometimes a band’s debut ends up shining brighter than anything else they ever commit to record, but sometimes it ends up as an embarrassing reminder of a direction less travelled, an image best forgotten, or at best, a standard of song-writing long since surpassed. These then, are the ten best examples of why a band’s first tentative musical steps are not always the best ones to follow in, to gauge a band’s future merit.
1. The Stone Roses – So Young/Tell Me
Ian Brown doesn’t even sound like Ian Brown, on these, the Roses very limited edition debuts – equally as distressing is John Squire’s somewhat leaden guitar-playing, and a complete absence of the danceable groove (a ghastly word, groove, but how else can one describe the Roses?) that would come to characterise everything good about this truly legendary band.
2. Radiohead – Prove Yourself
To go from this tepid opener to Pyramid Song in a decade is a neat trick, but seriously; this is average and gives nary the slightest clue of the invention and innovation the band would go on to demonstrate. If the music industry was as demanding on new artists in 1992 as it is now, Radiohead might have ceased to be after Pablo Honey, so savour them.
3. Mogwai – Tuner/Lower
Mogwai can rightly claim to be one of the most influential bands within the post-rock scene. However, if they’d kept writing songs as limp as these two debut offerings, then you can bet your life that a great deal fewer pale-faced ATP-dwellers (myself included) would be clutching their records quite so fervently to their chests.
4. The Beastie Boys – Either of the first two E.Ps, or “Rock Hard”
Whichever release you deem the official first Beasties single, they’re all a bit dire; ‘Rock Hard’ even sounds a bit like boyband middleweights Five. Quite some leap from these first missives to ‘Licence to Ill’ then…
5. New Order – Ceremony
Granted, this is started as a Joy Division song, but this is another example of a debut which fails to demonstrate any of the musical trademarks that would come to characterise all of New Order’s best (and most influential) output.
6. The White Stripes – Let’s Shake Hands
This isn’t explicitly bad; if anything it sounds quite exciting in a way, like the start of something special, which The White Stripes undoubtedly are these days. It’s still impossible to listen to it and truly enjoy it though, because it is, in context, an average Jack White composition which he has surpassed with ease hundreds of times since.
7. The Beach Boys – Surfin’
Accept it; Wilson is the greatest songwriter of all time, and whilst this must have sounded frighteningly fresh in early 1960s America, it sounds thumpingly generic to modern ears, and a poor relation to the genius works of Pet Sounds and Smile. Yes, it’s an obvious choice, but sometimes the word genius is fitting.
8. Girls Aloud – Sound of the Underground
Steady now – GA are the best pop band in the country, thanks in no small part to Xenomania’s writing talents. This is typically rubbish pop though; average production, average performances and none of the personality that pervades their records these days. You may scoff, but listen to ‘The Show’ and try and disagree with me – there are more hooks in that one song than the whole of ‘Up All Night’.
9. Four Tet – Thirtysixtwentyfive
Keiran Hebden’s work as Four Tet has become incredibly influential, but on this (very lengthy) debut single you can almost hear the cogs turning in his massive musical mind – it’s almost there, but it’s not quite.
10. The Smiths – Hand in Glove
I don’t even dislike Hand in Glove, but consider 4 of the next 5 singles that follow it: ‘This Charming Man’, ‘What Difference Does It Make?’, ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’ and ‘How Soon is Now?’ – it’s a good tune, but it doesn’t mark them out as world-beaters.
