Second Hand Smoke
Most posthumous albums are shrouded in a sense of morbid nostalgia and grim curiosity. In Sublime's case, there was also some cruel irony to contend with: the California nuevo-punk outfit's promising self-titledmajor-label debutand commercial breakout was released barely a month after frontman Brad Nowell's death from a heroin overdose--and their de facto demise. But such was the Long Beach band's longtime following that raiding the vaults, however sparse, was inevitable. Released 18 months after Nowell's death,Second Hand Smokemore than lived up to its title, cobbling together a collection of outtakes from their debut and padding them out with (sometimes multiple) remixes of old tracks like "Doin' Time," "April 29," and theGwen Stefaniduet, "Saw Red." There's a standout cover ofBob Marley's "Trenchtown Rock," but a lot of the rest feels like the incomplete discards and second (or third) choices they obviously were.--Jerry McCulley