"Planet Claire"

I love this. It's as if Kraftwerk had discovered guitars and cheap science-fiction novels while watching a crime series on American TV. As I've described elsewhere, there are two different groups called the B 52s: this is from their first incarnation as a trashy, beehived suburban punk dance band. It's a stripped-down, bare sound that suggests jerky, geeky dancing at a frat party. As with most of the B 52s' early stuff, it's got this fixation with outer space: "Planet Claire has pink air/All the trees are red/No one ever dies there/No one has a head." Clearly we're not talking Neil Young here, but it's got bags of atmosphere and it just sounds so damn good - it's like you've wandered into the sound effects studio while they're putting the final touches to a Hammer horror film.