Released 1987 Artist Opal Producer David Roback Genre Paisley Underground | Length 41:31 Release date 1987 Label SST Records | |
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Northern Line (EP)
(1985) Happy Nightmare Baby
(1987) Happy Nightmare Baby
(1987) Early Recordings
(1989) Similar Early Recordings, She Hangs Brightly, Five Ways of Disappearing, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip, Through the Devil Softly | ||
Happy Nightmare Baby is the debut album by the American band Opal, released in 1987 by SST Records. It was the only album released by the band while together, singer Kendra Smith leaving during the tour to promote it, to be replaced by Hope Sandoval, the band evolving into Mazzy Star.
Contents
The album was produced by the band's guitarist and co-songwriter David Roback, who said of the album: "Happy Nightmare Baby was a very electric record. We were very orientated towards playing live at that point. What we’d been doing before that was very acoustic, and then we thought we’d make it very electric."
Reception
Ned Raggett, reviewing the album for Allmusic, gave it four stars out of five, calling it "at once drowsy, psychedelic, entrancing, and possessed of a sinuous spark". It was described by PopMatters in 2009 as a "lost semi-masterpiece". Trouser Press described Smith's singing as "laconic", some of the instrumentation as "self-indulgent nonsense" and the pace as too slow, but viewed the album as "ultimately satisfying". Andrew Earles, in his book Gimme Indie Rock: 500 Essential American Underground Rock Albums 1981-1996 described the album as "Velvet Underground meets T-Rex at the intersection of proto-shoegaze and neo-psychedelia".
Track listing
- "Rocket Machine" (David Roback) 4:24
- "Magick Power" (Roback, Kendra Smith) 6:14
- "Relevation" (Roback) 2:53
- "A Falling Star" (Roback, Smith) 1:21
- "She's a Diamond" (Roback, Smith) 4:18
- "Supernova" (Roback, Smith) 4:17
- "Siamese Trap" (Roback, Smith) 6:38
- "Happy Nightmare Baby" (Roback, Smith) 2:52
- "Soul Giver" (Roback) 8:34
Songs
1Rocket Machine4:30
2Magick Power6:20
3Relevation3:01