The Cramps - Big Beat from Badsville

Recorded in May 1997 at Earle Mankey's house in Thousand Oaks and released later that year, Big Beat from Badsville was the sixth Cramps studio album and the sound of a band that had long since stopped caring what decade it was. Lux Interior and Poison Ivy produced it themselves, and it plays like the work of two people who had perfected their own private genre and were now just having fun inside it.

The songs come loaded with the usual filth and glee. "Cramp Stomp" opens with a dance-craze swagger, "God Monster" lurches through four minutes of theremin-scarred menace, "Like a Bad Girl Should" is as close to a pop single as this band ever got, and "Sheena's in a Goth Gang" delivers exactly the punchline the title promises. Flip to side B for "Super Goo," "Hypno Sex Ray" and "Burn She-Devil, Burn," three of the most gloriously stupid-brilliant titles in the catalog.

Ivy's guitar tone here is a thing of real beauty — all tremolo and reverb and razor-edged rockabilly runs — while Lux prowls the mic in full drive-in-monster mode. Later-period Cramps is often unfairly overlooked, and this is the record that proves it should not be.

This is the 180-gram white vinyl reissue on Big Beat Records. A loud, lurid entry from the back half of a genuinely singular catalog.