4 out of 5

Label: Alternative Tentacles

Produced by: Cecil English, Craig Bougie, Nomeansno

As I get older, and further away from the years when I discovered bands that were formative for my music tastes, when I hear something that currently comes across as pretty mindblowing, then find that it came out before those formative years… I’m not sure whether I feel older or younger as a result, but I feel a lot dumber, in a good way.

Nomeansno is by no means an unknown quantity, with Wrong having been a relative hit for them, and I’d heard the band referenced by others, plus I recall stocking and selling plenty of discs from them when I worked at a music store. I believe myself to be moderately educated in music, from maybe the 70s / 80s onward, with some dabblings across most genres save classical – though, sure, I think a lot of music fans think of themselves comparably.

Still, I at least know some basics: Nirvana existed before Teen Spirit. No-wave quite before that. Punks and noisemakers have been breaking speakers for decades. It’s not necessarily that Wrong’s intense punky grungeness surprises me for having been released in 1989, it’s how modern it sounds. How flexible the lyrics are; how thick the production is; how skillfully the bass and drums and guitars interweave; how the band comfortably flicks between hardcore and singalongs, silly and serious; I feel dumb when I am reminded how timeless the best music can be, because that’s part of the damn point, and when you discover something that proves that for you, it’s an amazing thing.

I’d always passed over Nomeansno because, ahem, of the Alternative Tentacles thing, Jello Biafra’s imprint which I just kinda universally brushed off as catering to snotty punks who overthought their subversiveness, or stuff that I missed the boat on fully grasping its cultural impact. And if I have a criticism of Wrong, it’s related to that: the group varies between these intense or cutting critiques of class or social dynamics – common for punk, but delivered here with clever, compelling lyrics and a passion that’s not just cringey posturing – and some comparatively silly numbers that have a mindless Ramones simplicity to them (if amped up to NMN’s 11). They’re fun songs, but the album is always on, and there’s something about spending that intensity on these toss-offs that lessens the whole – lightly akin to the aforementioned faux subversiveness.

Musically, though, this stuff kills: Primus funk and complexity in the bass; precision hardcore punk drumming; and an interestingly “clean” guitar sound that hits hard but is chosen well to not overwhelm. Whoever’s singing (John Wright? Rob Wright?) has yelling chops to match the speed of the tracks and still enunciate, but can also slow things down to harmonize with Danielle Gagnier on The End of All Things. …Which is also hard as balls.

This album rocks.

It would’ve defined a lot for me in ’89 – who are these Nirvana jokers? – and so maybe means even more, now, that it sounds so good, packs such a wallop, and turns out to have just been waiting in the wings for literal decades, until my dumbass was smart enough to notice it.