Best band never to release a truly great album?

Under their own name, it has to be Little Village. Though they are on record in VERY fine form (first heard on John Hiatt's Bring The Family album), they recorded and released only one album under their own name, and it's not good. The rule going in was that no member (John Hiatt, Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe, and Jim Keltner---is that a Super Group, or what?!) could bring any already-written material---all songs had to be written on scene. Not a recipe for making good music.

Very surprised Natellie Merchant never produced a great album, Beth Hart has a great voice with some great songs but not a great Album.
Great Albums I would say Patricia Barber, Kate Schrock come to mind.

So am I -- maybe she needed more oboes to set off her voice.

Tigerlilly is not a great album? Really? And Ophelia, is great as well in my opinion !

Not surprisingly, BDP nails this one,

Little Village, Possibly the most promising supergroup of them all, released that?  It's not bad at all, but it is an absolutely pedestrian album.  I like it a fair bit, but great it ain't.

I'm not sure that any of The Replacements' albums are great.  Several are really good, but all have some dead weight.  I think Westerberg's solo albums were probably more consistent and overall better records.

The Pentangle, with two spectacular guitarists in Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, had lots of great music spread over a bunch of very good, but IMO not great albums, too.