The Boo Radleys - C'Mon Kids (1996)

Wake Up! brought the Boo Radleys pop success that they weren't sure what to do with. After embracing the album's number one success, the group eventually recoiled from the spotlight and Martin Carr wrote C'mon Kids as a direct response to the group's celebrity status in the U.K. Simply put, C'mon Kids is an attempt to scare away any of the fellow travelers who welcomed the sunny-sounding pop of Wake Up! It's a gnarled, twisted, and distorted album, as dense as Giant Steps and as loud as the Boos' early EPs. And, if you can make it through the murky guitars, fragments of songs, altered vocals, and tape effects, some melodies and creatively crafted songs make the album nearly as rewarding as Giant Steps or Wake Up! It takes time to get into C'mon Kids, though. At first, it's disarming to hear Sice scream his vocals and the Boos play heavy riffs. After a while the melodies begin to reveal themselves, as do the clever song structures and inversions of the band's psychedelic hooks and folk tendencies. C'mon Kids might not be as accessible as even Giant Steps, but it displays a feverish sense of purpose and a perverse willfulness to refashion their sound, making it an easy album to admire, if not love.