Enjoy!

While Southern California punks the Descendents were maturing, they didn’t want to be seen as such and went about designing album art that played to the least mature of their instincts. However, packaged inside the album was some of the band’s finest power-pop (only “Orgofart” is truly useless). “Kids” may be 45 seconds of manic silliness and the heavy-metal spoof of “Hürtin’ Crüe” shows off only their chops, but the note-perfect rendition of the Beach Boys’ “Wendy” signaled the best the group could offer. Throw in the bitter disappointment of new-wave snottiness behind “Sour Grapes” and “80’s Girl,” the sincere lonely heartache of “Get the Time” and the gorgeous optimism of “Cheer” and you have the schematic for power-pop-punk for the ensuing decade. Bands from Nirvana to Green Day studied these guys very carefully and took what they needed to get the job done. But the original Descendents studio albums from the ‘80s remain the definitive, essential textbooks.