Something I've been kicking around for a while is little summaries of bands' careers that I've followed from beginning to end. So here are three of them:

Thursday – Like many bands, Thursday’s debut was a rough outline of what was to come. Muddled production didn’t help, and the sound wasn’t quite there yet. Their second album, Full Collapse was an album that created an entire genre of music. If not created, at least popularized. From start to finish, it was an experience, bookended by electronic sounds, filled with fantastic lyrics and pained screams, memorable sections of songs, spoken word, and layered, lush guitars. It was an impossible album to eclipse, but Thursday’s complete failure to even get close is disappointing. Aside from the description above, the album benefitted from two things: low expectations and good production, highlighting the unique strengths of the band. Their next album, War All the Time, was solid, with a few exceptional songs, but it didn’t have the overall strength of its predecessor, and the production started “cleaning” up, which did not help the band. This only got worse on A City by the Light Divided, which, as you may be able to tell from its highfalutin title, was supposed to be (according to them on their live DVD) the album the band had always wanted to make. It was completely forgettable, and found the band sounding like a band that listened to Thursday growing up, trying and failing to emulate them. The songs weren’t catchy or powerful, and a big part of that was because of the production, which completely missed the point of the band. Guitars dulled and ran into each other, and everything generally sounded muddy and boring, and by this point Geoff’s voice had gotten “good,” to the detriment of the band’s sound. I figured this was the end of Thursday, but then there came some hope with the new stuff on their B-sides album and their split with Envy. The split in particular showed the band simultaneously maturing and getting back to the sound that served them so well on Full Collapse. With my expectations set high, the band released Common Existence, an album that I listened to maybe twice. I guess there’s always next time, but I may not be there to hear it.

Thrice – Identity Crisis was a rough version of the band that would go on to release the breathtakingly hard yet catchy The Illusion of Safety. Thrice would never sound this good again, suffering from some of the same problems that faced Thursday: poor production and high expectations. Subsequent albums took the blazing lead guitar from Safety and buried it under rhythm guitar and bass, and the edge disappeared from Dustin’s voice. It also didn’t help that Thrice lost their edge. The harder punk band from the first two albums mellowed out and produced albums full of similar sounding songs. The Artist in the Ambulance may have suffered from too-high expectations, but it also suffered because it lacked any songs that punched you in the gut like we’d come to expect. Vheissu was forgettable, and The Alchemy Index, while a cool idea, was ultimately too expensive and bogged down by double-album syndrome. There were some songs, particularly on the Fire album, that tried to get back to what I liked most about the band, but the Water album was almost entirely forgettable, and the best stuff off of Air and Earth reminded me of a weaker version of Dustin’s surprisingly good solo album. That said, it’s probably the coolest vinyl concept that I own, with each album on an appropriately colored 10” in a book that has all the lyrics and notes about each song. If only the music was that awesome.

No Use For A Name – This band reached a great three album apex with Leche Con Carne, Making Friends, and More Betterness. Leche was great straight up punk, Making Friends saw the band becoming more melodic, and More Betterness brought the band into pop punk territory fully, but did it with great songs and great lyrics. Then the band hit Hard Rock Bottom (excuse the pun), and slummed through that album, a mediocre live album, and the completely forgettable, one-note Keep Them Confused. Luckily, last year’s The Feel Good Record of the Year was a nice step back towards being relevant for the band, with songs that actually sounded different, and included different instruments. You can only play the same poppy punk songs for so many albums before you need to change something or fade away, and that album changed just enough without losing the band’s sound. Here’s hoping that the next album keeps the momentum going and doesn’t become “40 Year Olds Trying to Play Punk, but They Don’t Really Like It Anymore, Part III” (see Hard Rock and Confused for parts I and II).

I'll probably do more of these in the future, because while I realize that no one who reads this aside from Brian has probably ever listened to a single song by any of these bands, it's kind of fun to write and trace a band's high and low points.