Green

The band made demos in Athens in March and April 1988, then left I.R.S. for Warner Bros. in a deal reported at between $6 million and $12 million. Basic tracks were cut at Ardent in Memphis from May 24 to July 5, and work at Bearsville ran until September 3. They planned one electric side and one acoustic side, but a shortage of acoustic songs derailed the idea. Buck played mandolin on three tracks after buying an Italian mandolin-lyre in 1987. The working titles were Carnival for the untitled closing track and Mozart for The Wrong Child.

Green reached No. 12 in the United States, No. 27 in Britain, No. 6 in New Zealand and No. 16 in Australia, and sold about four million copies worldwide. Orange Crush and Stand both reached No. 1 on the US Modern Rock and Mainstream Rock charts. Robert Christgau praised the first half as rousing, funny, serious and elegiac and faulted the second for dubious poetry and heavy tempos. Mills himself called the album haphazard and a little scattershot.