This is a special album if there ever was one. Recently I've been considering this to be the band's best album second only to Bee Thousand but at only 16 tracks, this could be even better due to it's focus. Focus and GBV? not something we associate with Pollard and co. when it comes to consistent song selection and such, but this album cuts the crap... save for track 3. The focus is not some magical stroke-of-luck, as people would have you consider everything GBV ever did, but Pollard making the very calculated decision to give up on music and make one final LP as a grand finale to years of focusing all of his time, money and being on music that no one cared about. Of course this album was so fucking good that it brought the band into the limelight and jump-started their best period of writing/releases that would yield six studio LPs, nine EPs, splits with Superchunk and the Grifters AND four live LP's... all from 92-96
This album covers everything the band does so well. Drunk as fuck rockers, bliss'd-out power pop, heroic anthems, stoned introspection and the indescribable weight of 'Weed King', the only song with that kind of building tension that Pollard ever wrote. If you want to get into GBV and the 20+ track listings of other offerings seem a bit too daunting, start here, the very place where it was all supposed to end. Also, for fun, here's a website that has images of nearly all 500 individual covers that were handmade for the original release.
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