WIPERS – Over The Edge (2022 Repress) – LP – Vinyl

LP -Black Vinyl.Remastered from original tapes as provided by Greg Sage himself, pressed on audiophile grade vinyl and housed in a deluxe tip-on sleeve.

This LP 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 twee.

Tracklist:

A1. Over The Edge
A2. Doom Town
A3. So Young
A4. Messenger
A5. Romeo

B1. Now Is The Time
B2. What Is
B3. No One Wants An Alien
B4. The Lonely One
B5. No Generation Gap