For one, I think using landmark recordings like "The Joshua Tree" in this context can be a bit unfair. We're talking about an album that almost any knowledgable fan of rock music has on their top 10 or 20 of all time. Of course there's going to be a letdown from The Joshua Tree to *anything*.

Agreed.

It was Achtung/Pop/Zooropa as a whole unit that I considered indicative of a shift in the band's musical focus. I don't think the direction they took is a good one.

I haven't heard All That You Can't Behind, but it brings up a point that any band can make themselves over and do something brilliant and critically acclaimed even after a complete shark jump.

A good example is my personal favorite, Rush, who to many seemed to have jumped the shark on 1982's Signals (incidentally, that was the album following 1981's Moving Pictures, which, like Joshua tree, was a landmark recording, so the analogy is even more complete). It took them one more intermediate album to climb back up to the fantastic "Power Windows" album in 1985, only to put out a few more mediocre ones after that. Their next peak was 1993's "Counterparts" and I haven't really liked their albums since then.

So I'll agree that bands can dig themselves out of a Shark Hole. I don't know if there's an example of a TV show that survived long enough to even try.