The Cramps - Flamejob

Released in 1994, Flamejob caught The Cramps in a genuinely great late-period run. Lux Interior and Poison Ivy produced it themselves at Earle Mankey's studio, and the result is one of the loosest, filthiest and most immediately fun records in the catalog — a hot-rod album, a monster-movie album, a sex album, usually all at once.

"Mean Machine" opens with Ivy's guitar snarling like something with a carburetor, and the record barely lets up: "Ultra Twist" is a lost dance craze from a world that never existed, "Let's Get F*cked Up" is exactly what it sounds like, and "Nest of the Cuckoo Bird" and "Naked Girl Falling Down the Stairs" push the band's B-movie surrealism about as far as it will go. Side B closes on a filthy, swaggering run through Bobby Troup's "Route 66," which in Lux's hands sounds less like a travel song than a threat.

Thirty years on, Flamejob holds up as proof that this band never coasted. The rockabilly bones are the same as they were in 1979, but the playing is meaner and the production hotter, and Lux's delivery had only gotten more unhinged with age.

This is the Music On Vinyl reissue, pressed on 180-gram audiophile vinyl with an insert featuring band photos and full lyrics. A great-sounding edition of a criminally underrated record.