Artists you feel you can rely on, buy any new album unheard.

I agree with ebm, NOBODY is the correct answer. There is no artist, if they live long enough, who will put out music that will always please you no matter how much you love them. Not even Bowie. They all end up either going commercial at times or experimenting with some abstract thing that will be completely unlike the bulk of their work. That's the nature of the beast. Like if you like blonds, some of them will still be ugly :)

baylinor    true   amazing how $12 is light as a feather when an album is great, but so painful when the album sucks :-)

"amazing how $12 is light as a feather when an album is great, but so painful when the album sucks :-) "

"There is no artist, if they live long enough..."

For most of my life, I've been pretty loyal to the artists that have given me joy.  And they've pretty much all given me sucker albums eventually.  With the new streaming paradigm (using Tidal currently), I can listen first.  I still buy (usually vinyl) if I love an album, just to get my tiny vote out there.

There are a few that I still pre-order.
Tool
Radiohead
Beck
St. Vincent
Elbow
Fiona Apple
Alice in Chains
Weird Al

Led Zeppelin never disappointed me.

A few artists I was loyal to the end, but let me down a some point.
REM - Loved everything from Life's Rich Pageant to Up.  Couldn't get into Reveal, Really liked Around the Sun, Couldn't get into Accelerate, Really liked Collapse into Now.
Rush - Loved everything from 2112 to Signals, Really liked Grace Under Pressure to Power Windows.  Loved Hold Your Fire.  Liked Presto pretty well.  Liked half of most of the rest, except Test for Echo which I hated.
Pink Floyd - Liked Meddle, appreciate the before.  Dark Side to The Wall loved with all my heart.  Final Cut was a sucker album.  Really liked the two Gilmour albums, especially live.
Van Halen - OU812 wasn't good, but Carnal Knowledge was.  Balance suucked.  III never grabbed me.  Different Kind of Truth was a surprise gift.
Yes - This one almost isn't fair.  I was loyal to the end, but the last album I loved was Talk.  Highlights after that were The Ladder, Magnification.  The rest left me fairly cold.  I don't even remember the name of the last one with the new singer.

Some artists left me in the dust after intense love affairs.
Bjork

"They eventually found the percussionist in the morgue, but he wasn't quite dead, so they warmed him up again and he played in the concert."

david12,
Is that supposed to be funny?"

Roxy 54,  Not funny at all, just a true story. It speaks to what Russia endured in "The Great Patriotic War", particularly Leningrad. Nobody knows how many died, mainly of cold and starvation, but probably more than a milliion out of a 3 million population in 1940. The worst winters for many years and a daily ration of not more than 200gms of bread. Just bread, nothing else. My mother in law said people left home in the morning and never came home from work, just fell dead in the street, particularly in winter of course.

Vikander Olafsson
Jennifer Hewitt
Mitsuko Uchida
Murray Perahia
Andras Schiff
Arcady Volodos

Fred Hersch
Ahmad Jamal (even in his 90’s!}

Each a pianist...