Shine by Mother Love Bone

Shine, the debut EP from Seattle's Mother Love Bone, came out on Stardog/Mercury in 1989, and it's the sound of a band swaggering toward the big time. Cut at London Bridge Studio, it catches Andrew Wood at full, flamboyant tilt, a frontman whose charisma and songwriting had lifted the group to the top of a Seattle scene just starting to boil, with Stone Gossard's guitar and Jeff Ament's bass laying down riffs heavy and loose enough to strut to.

No band from that grunge-leaning crowd had signed to a major before them, and this was the only collection of their recordings released while Wood was alive; he died in March 1990, just before Apple was due, and Gossard and Ament went on to form Pearl Jam. The track that has lasted is "Chloe Dancer / Crown of Thorns", a two-part suite that sounds sadder with every year since.

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