Sublime: Greatest Hits [GEFFEN/UNIVERSAL]

Why you'll love it

This remastered limited edition comes with a printed insert of credits and album-cover photos. It packs the Long Beach band's best-known songs, "What I Got" and "Santeria" among them, onto one tidy LP.

This edition

• Remastered
• Limited edition
• Printed insert

About the album

Sublime made ska, punk, reggae and hip hop sound like they'd always lived on the same street. This was the first compilation to gather their songs after singer and guitarist Bradley Nowell's death in 1996, and it reads like a set list built for a backyard on a warm evening.

"What I Got" and "Santeria" are the big ones, easy, sunny and impossible to shake. "Wrong Way" bounces on a ska beat, "Badfish" goes back to their early days, and "Doin' Time" floats on a replayed slice of Gershwin's "Summertime," via Herbie Mann. "Saw Red" and the brief "Poolshark" round out a sequence that never sits still. Nowell, bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh mixed their influences so casually that it's easy to miss how skilfully it's all put together; Skunk Records, the band's own label, is still on the sleeve.

The original enhanced CD carried the videos for "What I Got" and "Wrong Way." Ten songs, under half an hour, and somehow it still feels like an entire summer.

Also at Kops: more Sublime on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Gasoline Alley / Skunk / Geffen (cat# B0029132-01), a reissue of the 1999 compilation.