At Yankee Stadium

The cheekily titled 1978 set At Yankee Stadium was actually recorded at Bearsville Studios in upstate New York; that was NRBQ’s home base in the late '70s, when the band were in their prime. While the music here certainly shares qualities with contemporaneous albums by Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, and Bruce Springsteen, NRBQ were great because they were mostly off in their own little world. The album is at once lean and far-reaching. There's the superb power pop of “I Want You Bad” and “Green Light,” the '50s-style rave-ups of “Get Rhythm” and “Shake, Rattle & Roll,” and even a vintage R&B/jazz workout in “That’s Neat, That’s Nice.” NRBQ were rightly famous for their studies of the Lennon-McCartney canon, masterful proof of which comes here in the form of “Just Ain’t Fair,” “I Love Her, She Loves Me,” and “It Comes Naturally.” A lot of up-and-coming new wave bands were mining the same territory, but where most of those acts—Costello and Lowe include—relied on a wiry, spiky tone, At Yankee Stadium is remarkable for its warmth and naturalism, even when moving at top speeds.