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SY is my very favorite band, so I was as upset as anyone about their breakup. And in my opinion, they were still making great new music right until the end. Now that many years have passed, I think it's fair to question if their breakup was for the best, strictly from the standpoint of recorded music. (Live concerts are a different matter.)
For example, I don't think Lee would have had time to make the four LP's that he's released if SY had remained active. And I suppose there would have been no Body/Head, Chelsea Light Moving, some of Steve's other projects, etc. Of course, we will never know what SY's output would have been had they remained together. They probably would have released another three or four records by now, but what would they have sounded like? We will never know.
Personally, I've enjoyed Lee's output the most since the breakup. And I think his work has been the greatest departure from SY's style. With SY still active, we might have never heard most of those songs. Maybe a few of them would have appeared on SY records.
To be clear, I'm not questioning whether it would have been better for SY to have never existed. I would not trade their 27 years of musical output for anything. But I'm not sure that their collective output since The Eternal would match what they have done separately. Again, we will never know.
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