Tear

Tear is of the same quality as Head. Loud, proud, and accomplished atmospheric music with punk-ish drive is about as common as the Dodo bird. Mysterious, cloudy, and dense enough to please the most devout swirl-guitar or shoegaze fan with enough raw edge to please the Americana dirt/grunge crowd, Lotion seems the perfect crossover, but there's more. The important things are the material and the careful guitar arrangements, which are once again first-rate. If you don't have Head and Tear, you're missing out on two of the finest EPs of 1996. Easily the best music by a new N.Y. band since Flower hung it up four years prior. And this is Kramer's finest production work ever.