Del Amitri Some Other Sucker's Parade 1997

Image the hard-rocking power-pop of Cheap Trick with brains, better songs, and smart, personal lyrics. Or Matthew Sweet's big crunchy guitars and harmonies strapped to relationship woes, depression, and drug and alcohol abuse. Bleak never sounded better.

The fast rocking Not Where It's At (kicking things off in style, she's looking for someone he's not), Some Other Sucker's Parade (time for bad luck to pick someone else), Won't Make It Better (some things just can't change, for instance you), Medicine ("Sometimes it's the medicine itself that makes the pain"), Funny Way To Win (riffing guitars), and Life Is Full (the fool who has everything under control) all feature big loud guitars, fine organ, hot drumming, intricate harmonies, catchy choruses, and smart, if rather down lyrics.

High Times and Cruel Light of Day examine excess from a knowing, personal level, and both rock hard and have fine lyrical turns.

The ballads include What I Think She Sees (a woman in love with an incorrect vision of her man), No Family Man (more relationship issues), Through All That Nothing (a sweet, melancholy love song), and Lucky Guy (the tale of the lucky cheater, who gets what he wants, but is "unlucky for some").

The band is smoking hot. Justin Currie and Iain Harvie write and sing great melodies and harmonies, the guitar interplay is top notch, the songs are consistently strong. The production is clean and relatively simple (they were supposedly trying to capture a live sound), with limited instrumental overdubs.

I don't know if your results will be the same, but it goes on a fairly short list of near-perfect records in my book.