Bran Van 3000: Glee

It's hard to imagine 1998 producing a more restlessly inventive album than Glee, the indescribable debut full-length from Montreal's genre-surfing nine-member collective Bran Van 3000: From start to finish, it's a dizzying mish-mash of samples, beats, guests, sound effects, choruses, raps, riffs, exclamations, and interludes. Frankly, it's amazing how many genres the album spans, oozing effortlessly from R&B ("Drinking In L.A.") to tuneful, new-wavey pop ("Problems") to rap ("Forest") to reggae ("Rainshine") to deadpan dance ("Exactly Like Me"), to mild singer/songwriter pop ("Everywhere") to country ("Supermodel") and beyond. Sometimes, the transitions—from, say, pop/rock to reggae, or country to rap—take place within a single song; that's saying nothing of a creepy cover of "Cum On Feel The Noize." At times, Bran Van 3000 tries to stuff so much into Glee that it neglects to write cohesive songs, and some of the more straightforward hip-hop/rap tracks ("Carry On," "Afrodiziak") pale next to Glee's more genre-defying material. But these 19 songs are almost never boring, if only because Bran Van 3000 is so full of ideas: It's refreshing, in a world of one-trick ponies, to hear so many sounds going on in a single overwhelming, exhausting hour. Glee doesn't always work, but that breathless innovation is what makes it such an unforgettable debut.