The Head on the Door
Artist: The Cure
Community Score: 8.14

After recording one of their darkest albums, 1983's The Top, the Cure regrouped and shuffled their lineup in 1984 and ended up changing their musical direction rather radically. While the band always had a pop element in their sound and even recorded one of the lightest songs of the '80s, "The Lovecats," The Head on the Door is where they become... Read More

Ride the Tiger
Artist: Yo La Tengo

Anyone who encountered Yo La Tengo's first album, Ride the Tiger, upon its original release in 1986 can be forgiven if they didn't immediately recognize that the band would become one of the most consistently interesting American acts of the next 15 years. Yo La Tengo's debut is a decidedly modest affair, and Ira Kaplan often sounds as if he's... Read More

Blind Leading the Naked
Artist: Violent Femmes

A more mainstream effort courtesy of producer Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads). Gano returns to his troubled teen persona and the band rocks harder than on the previous two releases. A nice cover of the T-Rex classic "Children of the Revolution" and the yearning "I Held Her in My Arms," complete with a horn section, are highlights. ~ Chris... Read More

The Smiths
Artist: The Smiths
Community Score: 8.00

Arriving in an era dominated by synth pop and gloomy post-punk, the Smiths' eponymous debut was the bracing beginning of a new era. On the surface, the Smiths' sound wasn't radically different from traditional British guitar pop -- Johnny Marr's ringing, layered guitars were catchy and melodic -- but it was actually an astonishing subversion of... 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

London 0 Hull 4
Artist: The Housemartins
Community Score: 10.00

Like a box of chocolate truffles with BBs hidden in them, a Housemartins album offers deceivingly simple and tuneful pop songs that are designed to cause you some discomfort once you start chewing on them. Singer and songwriter P.D. Heaton sings with a disarmingly boyish voice, high and adenoidal, and his bandmates contribute angelic harmonies... Read More

Gotta Let This Hen Out!
Artist: Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians

Recorded at the Marquee in London shortly after the release of Fegmania!, the live Gotta Let This Hen Out! is a tense and exciting record, finding the raw energy that usually goes untapped in Robyn Hitchcock's music. Although the album makes the Egyptians sound more like a rock & roll band than they actually were -- they never played with such... Read More

Fegmania!
Artist: Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians
Community Score: 9.00

After the stripped-back collection I Often Dream of Trains, Hitchcock slowly formed a backing band called the Egyptians with ex-Soft Boys Andy Metcalfe and Morris Windsor and keyboardist Roger Jackson over the course of the next year. Fegmania!, the Egyptians' first album, was a distinct departure from both the Soft Boys and Hitchcock's previous... 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

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

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

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