Blind Melon -- Soup (Capitol, 1995)

Today Blind Melon are remembered for three things: the song "No Rain," a cameo by singer Shannon Hoon, a childhood friend of Axl Rose, in Guns n' Roses' "Don't Cry" video, and Hoon's fatal overdose in 1995.

But in between "No Rain" and Hoon's death, the group decamped from California to New Orleans and reinvented their hippie-dippie image and jam-band sound. They emerged with Soup, a groove-driven fusion of dark '90s alt-rock angst, New Orleans jazz and, oddly, country. Too bad nobody heard it. The record was largely ignored and the group were quickly branded one-hit wonders. Hoon died while on tour supporting the record, but not before the band recorded a pretty stunning and revealing Intimate & Interactive performance for MuchMusic.

Many point to the posthumous odds and ends collection Nico as proof of the band's brilliance, but this was their high-water masterpiece.