Descendents - Enjoy! (1986)

Highbrow humor was never a signature of the Descendents, but the toilet-themed album Enjoy is a bit much. The "song list" on the back cover, along with a graphic of a hand reaching for an empty roll of toilet paper, is comprised of various euphemisms for one's fecal product ("floater," "sausage," "loaf", etc). To accompany the choice of album art, two songs on the album, "Orgofart" and the title track, feature samples of band members cheering each other on as they fart into a tape recorder. "Enjoy!" is a ditty of the celebration of bodily outputs, accompanied by said recordings. "Days Are Blood," "Hurtin' Crew," and "Orgo 51" showcase the band performing in a much darker, more metallic style. These are disposable tracks for the most part, except for "Hurtin' Crew," which wound up on the Descendents' best-of album Somery. The best evidence of the newer sound was a version of another poppy breakup song, the Beach Boys' "Wendy."

Even as the band underwent changes in sound and membership, some great tunes that are central to the Descendents' pantheon were recorded. "Kids on Coffee" reiterated the loud-punks-on-caffeine jitteriness of the first album, and "Sour Grapes" is a story of the ever romantically frustrated geek as he tries to pick up a new wave girl. The album is a fine metaphor for the history of the Descendents; no matter what turbulence befell the band, some excellent songs were still able to seep through anything that clogged.~Enjoy! Review by Jeremy Salmon