Dada - Puzzle (Remastered, Expanded)

There is a long list of early '90s albums that got buried under the grunge avalanche, and dada's 1992 debut sits near the top of it. Puzzle was a Southern California record that refused to be a sunny one: psychedelia and power pop filtered through a noir haze, with a skeptical streak running underneath all that West Coast light. The Rorschach-blot cover art was no accident. This is a record designed to be read differently every time you pick it up.

"Dizz Knee Land" was the hit, a deadpan litany of American disappointments that climbed to number 5 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart and turned the trio into alt-radio fixtures. But the album around it is stranger and better than the single suggests. Michael Gurley's guitar work moves from jangle to genuine crunch, Joie Calio and Phil Leavitt lock into grooves that owe as much to funk as to anything on college radio in 1992, and the songwriting keeps twisting away just as you think you have it pinned. Hard to classify, harder to resist.

Puzzle went on to sell over half a million copies and landed on plenty of year-end critics' lists, yet it has never had a proper wide American vinyl release. Until now.

Made with the band's full support, this expanded double LP has been remastered specifically for vinyl by Mike Milchner at Sonic Vision and includes an entire fourth side of bonus tracks. Pressed on green and yellow "troll hair" vinyl to match the little guy on the cover, housed in a gatefold jacket with lyrics. A long overdue reissue of a record that deserved far better than it got.