I understand SK's feeling of missed opportunity with the record, and I really believe if the band had gone in the one of the directions proposed, a really adventurous experimental one, the result would have been wonderful. It probably would not have changed the relationship with their newly found wider audience or the commercial expectations of their label, in that it would have been compared to Starfish and found lacking just as GAF was, if for different reasons. The same arc would have resulted, a commercial breakthrough that could not be repeated. And as many have pointed out,  more success would have made them a very different band than the one that made P=A and their later masterworks.

I don't think trying to make a "commercial" record is an inevitable doom, and in the case of GAF, the talent and vision of the band shine through the frustration and constraints, internal and external. Despite many characterizations of it as half assed, I find it quite ambitious in scale, experimental in turns, diverse, and well crafted more often than not. Perhaps the frustration is just the feeling you could have done more, something all of us can pin on ourselves in retrospect.