Until I received this disc in the mail, I had heard only a few other Magnapop tracks: "Open The Door," "Lay It Down," and "Slowly, Slowly," all culled from those scrumptious Indie Top 20 comps that the English send our way. Strangely, I remembered these tracks having a much glossier production quality than anything on Magnapop. I smelled a mystery.

Solved. It seems that Magnapop is actually made up of demo tapes recorded from December of '90 to March of '92, and is a reissue of a European release that was hastily put together in response to their burgeoning (and sudden) popularity in the Netherlands following the '91 Rotterdam festival. To complicate matters further, Michael Stipe produced three of the nine tracks on Magnapop, a matter of some interest to detail- hungry music journalists like, well, everybody else.

What you get in Magnapop is 24.5 minutes of urgent Phair/ Belly- like grrl- punk-pop straight outta the garage. Opening with the venomous "Garden", the boys and girls come through with some impressive work for so early in their career. And interestingly enough, I actually prefer most of these tracks to their later work which seemed bereft of personality and certainly not nearly as pissed off. Call me crazy, but the menacing voice of Linda Hopper over those crunching guitars and crashing cymbals gives me a woody. What's the downside? Well, you'd better like the minimal production, and keep in mind that we're talking about 25 minutes of music for full- length price. Would I buy it? Never at full price. And remember, Mom says: "It ain't on sale unless it's more than 40% off!" Use this advice in good health.

-James P. Wisdom