What you say about pinnacle of the marriage of punk and Branca, that's how I see
Confusion Is Sex. That album is found,
Evol is found,
Bad Moon Rising is searching. And it does it magnificently. I was just listening to it, and, man how I love it. So it's pretty hard for me to now try and prove why it isn't perfect, in the sense of not being rounded and complete. It reaches for a new territory not knowing what and where it is.
You have a problem with not agreeing with the direction they took. I said it myself that I love their early period the most. But that doesn't prevent me from seeing what a great, found, rounded album
Daydream Nation is, regardless of it being rock friendly or not. It's a pinnacle of marriage of melody and noise, and traces of that melody (or pop sensibility if you will) slowly creeping into walls of noise can be heard all the way to Bad Moon Rising.
Evol actually knew how to incorporate it into a more rounded structure. It doesn't have to be a song structure to be rounded, just that you don't misunderstand me. But that's the problem with Bad Moon Rising. It struggles with any structure, be it droney walls of noise of one Glenn Branca or song form. It's somewhere in between, searching for a resolution to this tension. And that tension works in its favor, actually, on another level, the inner one. That's why it's so fascinating and daring and adventurous. But that prevents it from being perfect.
Well, damn, here's one of my favorite songs from it (this one is actually perfect
)