4 out of 5

Label: Alternative Tentacles

Produced by: Nomeansno

I heard the US edition of Sex Mad first, so that has to dominate my take; while I can’t deny preferring the track list on this edition (which was the original, pre-Alternative Tentacles version, and also used for the UK / Europe AT release for whatever reason), it feels… somehow wrong to rate it higher when that preference may be circumstance of it being novel. Like, my slight criticisms of the album – its lyrical limitations, and Dead Bob sticks out as a kind of hodgepodge of ideas in one song – would remain across both takes, just this version might be… slightly better, dangit.

So we get the “full band” version of the :30 second No Fgcnuik; compared to the a capella version 1:1 it’s kind of a wash, but I love how each version is better matched to its followup song: the US a capella one gets the noisier, punkier Love Thang, while this edition goes old school punk for those :30 seconds (the full band version) before giving us Hunt the She Beast, which is one of the dang funkiest tracks on here, and builds up to a killer solo which rivals the squall at the end of the brilliant Self Pity. She Beast’s (as I read them) parodic lyrics also shoot up to some of the smarter work here, and kind of – purposefully? – achieves the same purpose as Love Thang but feels a bit more clever about it. And pairing songs with more of a bass backbone around Dead Bob helps to prop that track’s cluttered structure up.

The resequencing of the album’s B-side moves Self Pity to the album closer, which is a better fit (it’s one of my favorite NMN tracks, but it’s almost too big to kick off the album side) and swaps Revenge to the penultimate track, which is also a better fit – it has the shouty chorus of a closer but it’s structurally thinner than Self Pity.