Chicago’s Eleventh Dream Day has remained one of the very finest guitar bands since the early 1980s, seemingly incapable of delivering a half-baked album since their landmark 1988 debut, Prairie School Freakout. In their early days, they managed to secure a major label deal with Atlantic, dropping some of their finest work with 1989’s Beet, 1991’s Lived to Tell and 1993’s El Moodio, with the middle child now finally back in the digital archives.

According to my vinyl copy, it was recorded “in a tobacco barn on the Niland’s farm in Cub Run, Kentucky,” with the core quartet of founding members Rick Rizzo and Janet Beveridge Bean plus guitarist Baird Figi and bassist Doug McCombs (also of Tortoise fame). This new edition has been given a remastered overhaul along with a couple newly added songs.

Eleventh Dream Day created a monster of an album where ferocious guitar rock collided with ramshackle cowpunk, neatly held together by the irresistible vocal harmonies of Rizzo and Bean — think John Doe and Exene Cervenka of X. There’s a blistering, untamed energy hovering over the LP, perfectly exemplified by one of several standouts, “It’s Not My World.”

Lived to Tell tanked at the time, but some bands are more concerned about crafting timeless pieces of art, and this album remains vital today. In a fair world, Eleventh Dream Day would be superstars.

This reissue is a perfect opportunity to discover their greatness.