Mother Love Bone "Apple"
FORMAT | LP
It's hard not to overstate how different rock music in 2016 would be if Seattle quintet Mother Love Bone had been able to make a second album. Their combination of Northwest grunge and runny-mascara glam sounded like a prediction of where hair metal, just beginning its decline in 1990, could go. Lead singer Andrew Wood's witchy stage persona, capped off by an inimitable yowl, transformed the taut, spiky rock turned out by his bandmates into gutter-glitter anthems, whether they were lost-highway chronicles like "Mr. Danny Boy" or otherworldly power ballads like "Crown of Thorns." Wood died of a heroin overdose just as Apple was about to be released, and the band broke up. Guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament went on to form Pearl Jam, whose chaotic take on grunge transformed the rock landscape only a year later. - RollingStone Magazine
