Big Lizard in My Backyard
Artist: The Dead Milkmen
Community Score: 9.93

It may not be deathless, but 1984's Big Lizard in My Backyard is that rarest of beasts (as a random listen to any Barenaked Ladies disc will show): a collection of rock & roll silliness that outlives one playing. That mid-'80s favorite "Bitchin' Camaro" already demonstrated that ability plenty of times over. Portraying two guys yammering about... Read More

Best of the B-52's: Dance This Mess Around
Artist: The B-52's
Mars Needs Guitars!
Artist: Hoodoo Gurus
Community Score: 7.00

The Hoodoo Gurus followed the excellent Stoneage Romeos with the equally swell Mars Needs Guitars!, a second helping of Dave Faulkner's wonderfully skewed kitsch-pop confections. While the band's basic m.o. hasn't changed all that much in the interim -- '60s-era pop, garage rock, and cowpunk remain their key musical reference points --... Read More

Volume, Contrast, Brilliance... Sessions & Singles, Vol. 1
Artist: The Monochrome Set

This is another compilation, but back in 1983 this hugely rewarding record acted as a roundup of the group's career to date and was of immeasurable value to fans. It's aged well, too, and worth hunting down for some (quite radically different) radio versions of songs, oddities, and jocular moments, including John Peel introducing "Fat Fun" and... Read More

Love Zombies
Artist: The Monochrome Set

The group's second album (and last for Virgin subsidiary Dindisc), Love Zombies features more accomplished songwriting from main man Bid -- especially the title track and the playful "The Man With the Black Moustache." Fans -- BBC Radio DJ John Peel among them -- had long since recognized the Monochrome Set's supreme compositional agility. This... Read More

Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express
Artist: The Go-Betweens
Community Score: 8.00

Robert Forster's endearingly fey persona, equal parts Bryan Ferry and gangly bookstore clerk, reaches full flower on the Go-Betweens' fourth album, which tempers the angularity and occasional claustrophobia of the band's previous work with a new airiness and nervous romanticism. The lighter sound can be partly attributed to the growing influence... Read More

Spring Hill Fair
Artist: The Go-Betweens

With Robert Vickers and his more straightforward style of bass introduced to the band, McLennan switched fully over to guitar and the quartet entered the studio with producer John Brand for Spring Hill Fair. A slightly more conventional but no less entrancing collection of songs in comparison to Before Hollywood, Spring Hill Fair contains its... Read More

Ain't Love Grand!
Artist: X
Community Score: 6.00

After several exceptional (but commercially underappreciated) classic albums, X decided to change their approach on the fifth album, 1985's Ain't Love Grand! The most noticeable difference is in the production. Renown heavy metal producer Michael Wagener was on board (whose credits include Mötley Crüe, Dokken, and Great White), replacing... Read More

Album/Compact Disc/Cassette
Artist: Public Image Ltd.
Community Score: 9.00

Hot guitars and 4/4 time signatures make this sound more like a hard-rock album than anything Lydon's done since The Sex Pistols. And the hit single "Rise" is actually a catchy number, believe it or not. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide Read More

October Faction
Artist: October Faction

Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn's growing drive to express himself instrumentally led him to form a dizzying array of side bands, with varying degrees of success. This sprawling collective of musicians from Ginn's SST label offered his most uncompromising expression, being a free-form enterprise whose participants could play what they wished.... Read More

Double Nickels on the Dime
Artist: Minutemen
Community Score: 8.17

If What Makes a Man Start Fires? was a remarkable step forward from the Minutemen's promising debut album, The Punch Line, then Double Nickels on the Dime was a quantum leap into greatness, a sprawling 44-song set that was as impressive as it was ambitious. While punk rock was obviously the starting point for the Minutemen's musical journey... Read More

Up on the Sun - BONUS TRACKS
Artist: Meat Puppets
Community Score: 9.85

What does a band do when they're trying to follow up a masterpiece? Release another masterpiece, of course. That's exactly what the Meat Puppets did with 1985's Up on the Sun. Issued one year after Meat Puppets II, the songwriting had become more focused, the performances were tighter, and Curt Kirkwood's vocals had progressed from a... Read More

Out My Way
Artist: Meat Puppets

When originally released in 1986, the six-track Out My Way EP was supposed to be a stop-gap release -- guitarist/singer Curt Kirkwood had broken his finger, and needed time to recover. Musically, the EP showed that the Puppets were moving on from their early punk sound to a more traditional rock direction. But the band's originality was still... Read More

Big Shot Chronicles
Artist: Game Theory

Scott Miller broke in a new Game Theory lineup on The Big Shot Chronicles (a revolving-door cast of musicians was something he would get used to over the next decade or so), and if the album lacks the narrative cohesion of the group's first full-length effort, Real Nighttime, it's obvious from the album's first cut that the addition of Shelley... Read More

Ocean Rain
Artist: Echo & the Bunnymen
Community Score: 9.30

Channeling the lessons of the experimental Porcupine into more conventional and simple structural parameters, Ocean Rain emerges as Echo & the Bunnymen's most beautiful and memorable effort. Ornamenting Ian McCulloch's most consistently strong collection of songs to date with subdued guitar textures, sweeping string arrangements, and hauntingly... Read More

Songs to Learn & Sing
Artist: Echo & the Bunnymen

Liverpool's favorite lads Echo & the Bunnymen battled the cathartic reign of the Smiths and the enigmatic synth pop of Depeche Mode and New Order throughout the '80s movement of redesigned post-punk, and they became a staple image as well. Songs to Learn & Sing marked the Bunnymen's cemented place in new wave and relished the crooning ambience... Read More

Angry Years
Artist: The Fleshtones