Apple by Mother Love Bone

Apple, the only full-length album Mother Love Bone ever made, came out on Stardog/Mercury in 1990, and it arrived as a eulogy. Days before it was due, frontman Andrew Wood overdosed on heroin; he died after a few days in a coma, and the band ended with him. That's a cruel frame for a record this full of life. With Terry Date producing, the Seattle band swagger between grunge grit and glam-rock strut, Stone Gossard's guitar and Jeff Ament's bass laying down fat, rolling grooves while Wood preens through "Stardog Champion", "Stargazer" and "Gentle Groove" like a man who thinks he's already a star.

Wood's charisma and songs had lifted them to the top of the city's scene, and no band in that grunge-adjacent orbit had signed to a major label before them. Apple only crept to number 34 on the Heatseekers chart in 1992, by which time Gossard and Ament had moved on and formed Pearl Jam.

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