Ghost of a Dog by Edie Brickell And New Bohemians

Ghost of a Dog, the second album from Dallas's Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, arrived on Geffen in 1990, two years after their hit "What I Am", and it's a looser, stranger record than anyone expecting a sequel to that hit might have wanted. Tony Berg produced, and he gives the band room to stretch out: the jangle and folk-rock lilt are still there, but the grooves wander toward blues and jazz, with Brad Houser's bass keeping things supple under Brickell's sly, conversational vocals.

There's a puzzle hidden in the lyric sheet, too: each song's printed lyrics have one word missing a single letter, and in order those missing letters spell out the album's title. It sold about 500,000 copies, and after the tour the band went on an indefinite hiatus; Brickell left and married Paul Simon, and it was 2006 before Stranger Things arrived.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.