Wipers - Over The Edge LP

The bleak, hard-driven third LP by the Wipers (originally released in 1983) offers Greg Sage at his most chased and breathless, lashing out with sharp staccato notes as if melody were his only defense.

The album from the PDX punks finds them tightening up their sound to create what is arguably the Wipers' definitive album statement. Kurt Cobain listed it in his top 50 albums of all time. A distant cousin of the preceding "Youth of America" but undoubtedly no less excellent and no less venomous, "Over the Edge" is a return to the easily digestible song lengths of "Is This Real?"; however, it all but leaves that debut in its wake.

On the strength of some brave/smart radio stations that decided to play this album's Romeo (a propulsive horn-flecked slammer in the vein of Youth of America), Wipers solidified their status as a certifiable force in the American underground of the early '80s. Songs like Messenger and What Is show Greg Sage's increasing skill as a pop songwriter.

Despite the fusion of punk and pop, the record hardly mirrors the bands that would later be called punk-pop. In fact, this collision of the two elements makes what followed decades later seem extremely twee.

Tracklist:

1. Over the Edge
2. Doom Town
3. So Young
4. Messenger
5. Romeo
6. Now Is the Time
7. What Is
8. No One Wants an Alien
9. The Lonely One
10. No Generation Gap
11. This Time

About this product: this is a reissue on black vinyl.