Wipers: Is This Real? [JACKPOT]

Why you'll love it

This Jackpot reissue was remastered from the original tapes Greg Sage supplied, in a tip-on jacket with a printed lyric insert. Kurt Cobain listed it among the 50 albums that shaped Nirvana, and Spin ranked it the 40th most essential punk album in 2001.

This edition

• Remastered
• Tip-on jacket
• Printed lyric insert
• Pressed in the USA

About the album

Greg Sage started Wipers in Portland in 1977 with a plan to make records and skip touring altogether. The debut was first cut on a four-track in the band's rehearsal space, then made again in a proper studio when Park Avenue Records insisted, and it arrived in January 1980 to a small but devoted local following. Sub Pop put it out on CD in 1993, and Jackpot brought it back to vinyl in 2006.

Sage sings, plays guitar and produces, with Dave Koupal on bass and Sam Henry on drums. The songs are short and sharp, each built around a single hook, and the mood is dark and urgent. Robert Christgau, reviewing it in The Village Voice, picked out Sage's hard-edged vocals as detached but never silly, passionate but never overwrought. "Mystery" has since been covered by Eagulls and JEFF the Brotherhood, and "Up Front" by Poison Idea and Corin Tucker.

Nirvana recorded "Return Of The Rat" and "D-7" in the early 1990s, and John Peel named it one of his 20 favourite albums. Nirvana, John Peel and now your shelf, which is a fairly distinguished line of succession.

Also at Kops: more Wipers on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On Jackpot Records (cat# JPR82801), a reissue of the 1980 album.