The Descendents have spent the better part of a decade in a slow, methodical process of reclaiming their catalog from SST Records, and this week's reissue of Enjoy! via Org Music is the third release in that series — following All and Milo Goes to College. If you've been following the campaign, you know what this means: the band finally has proper control over their own records, and the reissues are being treated accordingly.
The Enjoy! reissue has been cut from lacquers by Dave Gardner at DSG Mastering, which puts this release in the same company as some of the best-sounding punk reissues currently available. An alternate 'punk note' edition is also available for people who want the collector's item version — though what exactly a 'punk note' edition entails aesthetically is the kind of thing you'll have to see to understand, and it's worth your time to look.
Enjoy! (1986) is the album that refined everything the Descendents had been building toward on I Don't Want to Grow Up and Milo Goes to College. The songs are tighter, Milo's voice is more controlled, and the production — while still unmistakably of its era — has the clarity to let the songwriting breathe. 'Sour Grapes,' 'Kabuki Girl,' 'I'm the One' — these are some of the best pop-punk songs written before the term 'pop-punk' existed as a genre category.
The reclamation of this catalog from SST is more significant than it might appear to casual fans. SST's management of its roster's rights has been a source of ongoing frustration for multiple bands — the label's founder Greg Ginn has been involved in various legal disputes with former artists over exactly this issue. The Descendents getting Enjoy! back on their terms is a genuine win, and Org Music has been a reliable partner for this kind of historically important reissue work.
There's a version of this news where it's simply a catalog item for collectors. But Enjoy! is actively influential — the fingerprints of this album are on the entire post-hardcore and pop-punk landscape, from the Descendents' direct heirs in the Fat Wreck/Epitaph world to more recent bands who absorbed it secondhand. Hearing it in a properly mastered transfer matters.
The punk note edition is limited; the standard vinyl is not. Either way, if you don't have this record in your collection in some form, that's a correctable problem.