The Wipers...

The last album by the legendary Wipers. America's Joy Division, at least I always thought so. Maybe not quite as tragic as Joy Division, but melancholic and introspective for sure. I found this for cheap on Amazon, and knew I had to pick it up. The Wipers are the great unsung punk/post punk/pre grunge band that never got their due like Husker Du or the Replacements did. But ask any musician and they'll say so many great things about them it'll make you sick of them. While "The Power In One" isn't my favorite Wipers album, but it was considered when it came out as a return to form for Greg Sage. He had been doing some pretty mellow stuff as The Wipers and his solo albums were pretty much lambasted as one step away from being Billy Joel or some other sad bastard genre. Even though I disagree (get his solo album "Sacrifice", it's just not the Wipers, but an amazing effort), "Power Of One" received a warm welcome by fans. Even the second half is pretty slow, and similar to his solo albums, everyone seems to forget that aspect. It's incredible that at this point, The Wipers were just two guys, Sage and drummer Steve Plouf. His guitar playing at this point was more fluid, less jagged, just sounds so confident. As a last statement by a band, it's a great one, going out with a bang instead of a whimper. All the songs on here are beyond fantastic, not one clunker in the bunch, but if you were to make a mix of Wipers songs for a friend, I would include "Rocket", "I'll Be Around" "Losers' Revenge" and especially "Take It Now". I'm on a mission now to buy all the Wipers albums, I've got most of them, but there's a few missing from my collection. "The Power Of One" isn't a starter album to delve into the Wipers, that would be "Over The Edge", but you could a lot worse than to pick it up....

14 songs makes the count at 17910...