Albums are graded on a five-point scale of "Awful-Eh-Good-Great-Classic". I'm highly biased, so don't take it too seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

David Garza

[#] This Euphoria (1998)

Skronk and sensitivity and snakes in equal measure.

Reviewed July 10, 2024

"I'm Da-veed Garza. You don't know me, but you will." So went the man during his Best Buy closeup, a 30-second ad spot to tie into their "Find 'em First" campaign for new CDs from smaller artists. Someone at Best Buy corporate sure liked him, as he was also featured track one on a contemporary guitar-centric compilation from the store (shoutout to dotcomboom), which is where yours truly was introduced to his freaky little tune "Glow in the Dark". Echoing, glistening chimes give way to a skank guitar and a big drum groove with David's nasal honk about a serpentine woman with voodoo charms and a lunatic within, and the damn thing stuck with me hard enough that I had to check out This Euphoria as a whole. I mean this as a good thing—I got a lot more than I bargained for.

What impresses me even more than how well this man can turn out a memorable song is just how much sonic range he can cover. David has this weird, cracked quality to his voice that can just as easily split into a hushed falsetto over fingerpicking about Heaven and Hell, a vulnerable croon over shimmering organs about blooming under the light of the moon tonight, or a slink over glam rock riffs about his new, kinder love. Some songs yet still go for the oddball approach: the excellent title track swells eerily like a ritual for the one with the seven eyes and the forty horns in its lyrics, and the jittery drum machine pulse and distorted bellows on "Discoball World" paint quite the world of gold-teeth stoners and laptop loners to lose your lover in. Sadly, we never quite knew David—though he did produce Fetch the Bolt Cutters!—but This Euphoria is a wild 90s leftfield hidden gem of the highest order.