B-52s - Wild Planet LP

Highly recommended.

With their 1979 debut the Athens, Georgia, quintet had an improbable hit record, peaking at #59 on the Billboard 200 and attaining critical acclaim. The record established the B-52's as one of the key bands of the American new wave scene alongside loose peers like Blondie, Talking Heads, and Devo. The band had built up a large cache of songs in the years preceding their debut, and thus they went to work on second LP Wild Planet quickly after the release of The B-52's, this time with Brian Eno acolyte Rhett Davies as producer. The band was once again flown to the Bahamas to record in April '80 as they had done for their first record, and Wild Planet came out in August of that year, just thirteen months after their debut.

Wild Planet is largely similar to the B-52's debut given that many of the songs originally date from around the same time but it's definitely not a case of diminishing returns. If anything Wild Planet is tighter, more focused, and more muscular than the debut, with a stronger hint of menace. Because of that, Wild Planet sounds to my ears closer to being a true "punk" record than the debut; it's possible that an extra year of cross-pollination with the New York scene had yielded something of a sonic convergence, and many listeners perceive a stronger influence from German motorik rhythms on the record.

With the band's off-the-wall exuberance being one of the debut record's main selling points, you'd think that a harder and nervier B-52's record wouldn't work as well, and Wild Planet didn't produce any songs as titanic as "Rock Lobster," but Wild Planet to me is just as good as the debut. There's less wacka-do lushness on Wild Planet but the punchier, bulkier production choices do make up for it, and the band have as much personality as ever. Wild Planet yet again makes good on the band's premise, a bunch of weirdos trawling their weirdo record collections and producing something nonetheless undeniably infectious out of it.