Happiness
Artist: The Beloved
Community Score: 8.00

Happiness, the Beloved's debut album, collects their four major hits -- "Hello," "The Sun Rising," "Love Takes Me Higher," and "Time After Time" -- and sprinkles in a few more club-oriented album tracks to fill out the LP. The post-rave synth-popsters are a bit too heavily tied to the heady days of ABC and Erasure, but Happiness suits its title... Read More

Smoke 'em If You Got 'em
Artist: Reverend Horton Heat

Given how the psychobilly/punk/greaser/whatever underground just seemed to grow and grow throughout the '90s, there's every reason in the world to choose this album as one of the things that sparked it off. Little doubt as to why, too, re-recorded on two-track after a more technically complex version was deemed to lack that certain something,... Read More

Pubic Fruit
Artist: Curve
Community Score: 8.90

Pubic Fruit is not a proper follow-up to Curve's debut full-length, but, instead, it gathers together three of the band's earlier E.P. releases which had only been released in the U.K. and adds the previously unavailable 12" version of "Fait Accompli." Despite the album being a compilation of sorts, it holds together quite nicely and provides a... Read More

Hit Parade 1
Artist: The Wedding Present

The Wedding Present have been unanimously despised by the British music press following a brief honeymoon period in the mid-'80s. When they announced their desire to issue a single a month for a whole year, one particularly caustic Melody Maker journalist pointed out that she now had two low spots in her monthly cycle to endure. It must also be... Read More

Copper Blue
Artist: Sugar
Community Score: 7.00

How ironic that after years fronting the hugely influential but desperately overlooked Hüsker Dü, Bob Mould's first project with new band Sugar, 1992's Copper Blue, would become the most commercially successful project of his career. Of course, it was released just as the seeds sown by his former band were bearing bountiful fruits in the... Read More

Little Magnets Versus the Bubble of Babble
Artist: Transvision Vamp

One 1991 release that certainly didn't deserve to be neglected was Transvision Vamp's \Little Magnets Vs. The Bubble of Babble, an eccentric and quirky effort drawing on both early-'80s new wave and '60s rock. Though the group sometimes inspires comparisons to outfits like the Divinyls and Siousxie & the Banshees, this obscure band has a sound... Read More

Lovegod
Artist: The Soup Dragons
Community Score: 7.50

The Soup Dragons' Lovegod is packed with contradictions; the synthesizers and breakbeats don't match the psychedelic cover art, and the guitars seem out of place within the slick production. If Lovegod is where the Soup Dragons supposedly found their sound -- and it is -- they still hadn't fine-tuned it to the level it would reach in a few short... Read More

The Nymphs
Artist: Nymphs

Since Nirvana's Nevermind pretty much killed glam-metal, the Nymphs' self-titled (and only) album might well be the last great glam-metal album. Released the same year as Nevermind, female lead singer Inger Lorre shares Kurt Cobain's sense of angst, a sense that was absent from most glam. In "Wasting My Days," Lorre sings, "Talk to myself, cuz... Read More

Smell the Magic
Artist: L7
Community Score: 7.50

On 1991's Smell the Magic, L7 begins to find the sense of melody to complement its distorted punk guitar assault. The band deserves ultimate praise for writing from a completely female perspective at all times, and the fabulous "Fast and Frightening" just might be the ultimate "riot grrrl" anthem. "Shove" pleads the case for mosh pit etiquette,... Read More

The Way to Salvation
Artist: King Missile

King Missile's initial stab at the world of major labeldom was fair if not great -- lacking absolute standout numbers like Mystical Shit's genius "Jesus Was Way Cool" and "Gary & Melissa," The Way to Salvation is enjoyable enough but lacks a final killer touch. Having Lou Giordano on production instead of Kramer is also a bit disconcerting --... Read More

Hindu Love Gods
Artist: Hindu Love Gods
Reluctantly We
Artist: Ellen James Society
Live in Toronto
Artist: The Chameleons UK

Thankfully captured by editor of the noted Big Takeover fanzine (and Chameleons diehard) Jack Rabid from a radio broadcast of a Canadian date in early 1987, Toronto remains the only official live document of the band from their final days, and the only one with a full mix of material from all three albums. Though the sound betrays the disc's... Read More