The Bears
Artist: The Bears

The debut album from the Bears is a solid slice of great guitar-driven pop tunes. Although Adrian Belew was seen nominally as the frontman, this was truly a band; four friends who had known each other for years, playing for pure joy. Songwriting duties were shared, with each member contributing at least one track, and they also wrote several... Read More

Fuck
Artist: The Leaving Trains

With a new lineup anchored by the band's sole returning member, singer/guitarist Falling James, the Trains begin to solidify around the atavistic paeans to dissipation and alienation that quickly are becoming James' stock-in-trade. The roaring guitars still rumble, but many of the last album's softer moments are lost in a preference for... Read More

Truth and Soul
Artist: Fishbone
Community Score: 8.25

By 1988, alternative/college rock was becoming a recognizable force in the mainstream. Several bands were big enough to play arenas, and many even earned gold and platinum albums. The tide was clearly changing for such previously misunderstood bands such as Fishbone. Their second full-length release Truth and Soul was issued that year, and... Read More

Hard Volume
Artist: Rollins Band
Community Score: 3.50

A vastly looser affair than their debut album, Hard Volume is the first glimpse of what Rollins Band would become with 1992's The End of Silence. The songs here are based more on the groove than they are on Life Time. The opener, "Hard," may seem a little over the top lyrically, but it has a swagger unmatched in the Rollins Band's catalog. This... Read More

Document
Artist: R.E.M.
Community Score: 8.21
Cloudland
Artist: Pere Ubu
Community Score: 4.00

It's funny, this might be the most controversial recording Ubu ever made. After years of brilliant chunks of avant-garde garage rock tomfoolery, they release a pop record, one with smooth corners, and production help from Stephen Hague (Pet Shop Boys). It's not as if Ubu is unrecognizable; the familiar idiosyncracies are here and in full effect.... Read More

Huevos
Artist: Meat Puppets
Community Score: 6.60

Recorded and released just a few months after the experimental Mirage, 1987's Huevos was a return to the Meat Puppets' earlier, more straight-ahead direction. The band (guitarist/singer Curt Kirkwood in particular) had always voiced their admiration of ZZ Top, and Huevos contained Billy Gibbons & Co.'s influence more than any other Puppets... Read More

For Ladies Only
Artist: Killdozer

Killdozer had already made their name in part with their not exactly respectful but not anything else covers of wreckage from the '70s, sometimes from unimpeachable sources like Neil Young and sometimes from the kind of acts people pay to forget. The logical end conclusion of this was For Ladies Only, which saw the trio tackling the same sort of... Read More

Bent by Nature
Artist: Glass Eye

Very edgy, angular pop. Deconstructed? Visionary! ~ Robert Gordon, All Music Guide Read More

You're Living All Over Me
Artist: Dinosaur Jr.
Community Score: 7.42

A blitzkrieg fusion of hardcore punk, Sonic Youth-style noise freak-outs, heavy metal, and melodic hard rock in the vein of Neil Young, You're Living All Over Me was a turning point in American underground rock & roll. With its thin, unbalanced mix, the album sounds positively menacing and edgy -- Lou Barlow's bass barrels forward over Murph's... Read More

Old Gold: 1989-1991
Artist: The Cows

Serving as both an excellent introduction to the Cows' freaked-out, discordant universe and as a reissue of older, out-of-print album tracks and singles, Old Gold captures this quartet's arc of development from a sloppy, discordant Butthole Surfer-esque punk band to legendary noise rock merchants. Culling tracks from 1989's massively off-kilter... Read More