Ok, I just asked this to myself off the top of my head and my first answer under duress is 'The Ideal Crash', The third album by dEUS, released in 1999 (a great, great year for music which deserves it's own blog one day).. Fair enough, this album went Gold in one week in Belgium (25,000 copies) and it has currently sold in the region of 250,000 but it never even got released in America! Why? I do not know... Considering this was also the first major label release (island) from dEUS is even more astonishing... Anyway, I personally think there are no duds on this album and it also spawned the epic Instant Street, which somehow only reached no 49 in the UK charts.
This album is not a million miles away from Radiohead and yes, it's a departure from their earlier classic and more experimental albums (which, believe me, i'm still a HUGE fan of - remember we're talking most 'underrated album' here) but the dEUS formula and Tom Barman's pop song craftmanship is certainly evident from start to finish. As this was released during the Radiohead 'gap years' between OK Computer and Kid A, this is surely the album that would have helped stave off withdrawals for any die-hard 'Radioheader'..
Anyway, If I ever meet someone who is a massive Radiohead fan, I always point them in the direction of The Ideal Crash....
