Album of the Day

Early Plague Years, by Thinking Plague (2000): Thinking Plague sort of "broke out" (in terms of the prog world, at least) with 1998's In Extremis, a slightly accessible version of the very odd RIO (Rock In Opposition) camp of prog. I got that album and loved it and wanted to hear more, so I ended up with this compilation of the band's first two albums, . . . A Thinking Plague and Moonsongs. Oddly, the Moonsongs tunes come first and are about what you'd expect, a more primitive version of what would become In Extremis. The . . . A Thinking Plague tunes, on the other hand, are really out there and owe more to New Wave than prog, IMHO.