The B-52's

Way before "Love Shack" permeated the staff party circuit, the B-52's were one of the coolest, weirdest bands to come out of the New Wave explosion. This album proves it. It's not all beehives and kitsch -- there are some seriously great surf/go-go/punk-pop songs here. "52 Girls" is probably their best moment ever. There's also that song about the lobster.

For American teenagers, the mid-Sixties were a kind of mythic high-water mark: a loony
but epic combination of kicks, innocence, explosiveness, camp and high drama, bound on
one side by the pop politics of the New Frontier and on the other by the casual surrealism
of Beach Blanket Bingo and Gilligan's Island. The B-52's capture what that period was about
better than anyone I can think of. In no time at all, this self-described "tacky littl... More >

Fond as I am of the pop junk they recycle--with love and panache, like the closet ecologists they are--there's something parochially suburban about turning it into the language of a world view. So I'm more delighted with their rhythms, which show off their Georgia roots by adapting the innovations of early funk (a decade late, just like the Stones and Chicago blues) to an endlessly danceable forcebeat format. Also delightful is their commitment to sexual integration--Cindy Wilson is singing more and more, although her voice occasionally gives out before her ambitions do. Major worry: only one of the copyright 1979 songs--my favorite track, "Dance This Mess Around"--is as amazing as the 1978 stuff. (Grade - A)