Eleventh Dream Day “Eleventh Dream Day” 1987. Fan Club Records (1989 French reissue, originally released on Amoeba Records). The debut EP from Chicago alt-rockers. Jangly, twangy and psychedelic-tinged, the Eleventh Dream Day EP is guitar-forward and DIY-spirited: while it doesn’t neatly fit into the garage-rock genre, it certainly has that fuzzed-out sound and flavor. My top track is the hypnotic and ass-shakingly grooving “Not the Ballad of a Girl” which somehow manages to have guitar blues riffs, a funk’d out bassline, psychedelic swirls and an addictive hook wrapped into one monster tune. Also amazing are the EP opener “Walking Through the Barrel of a Gun,” the bluesy Americana punk’d-up “the Arsonist,” and “Liz Beth” which is a darkly jangled rocker (and the opening bit sounds like a Pixies song). I feel like the west coat had the Gun Club, the south had R.E.M. and the Midwest had Eleventh Dream Day: each brought powerful early 80’s indie-rock to their respective regions (Eleventh Dream Day got together in ’83), though to varying degrees of success (obviously).

We’ve only seen Eleventh Dream Day perform once (to my knowledge), in May 2019 when they opened for The Dream Syndicate here in Milwaukee. I got the setlist from the show (on a styrofoam plate) and confirmed none of the songs performed that night were from this first EP (but it still was a great show).