Fruit of Life by Wild Colonials

Fruit of Life, the 1994 debut from Los Angeles' Wild Colonials, came out on DGC with Tchad Blake producing, and it sounds nothing like the flannel-and-feedback crowd around it. The band had formed only two years earlier around Angela McCluskey's smoky, wayward voice, with Shark on guitar, Paul Cantelon on violin and piano and Scott Roewe playing whatever needed playing, and that mix of strings, keys and percussion gives the record a dusky, worldly glow instead of a grunge roar.

"Spark" was the single, and it turned into a genuine radio hit. The band took the album out across North America, sharing bills with Toad the Wet Sprocket and Grant Lee Buffalo, before following it with This Can't Be Life.

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