1990: "Ghost Highway", Mazzy Star

When Opal splintered in the midst of a tour for their 1987 opus Happy Nightmare Baby, guitarist David Roback replaced vocalist Kendra Smith with Hope Sandoval and briefly continued the Opal brand, penning a handful of new songs for a second Opal full length to be titled Ghost Highway. By 1989 he had renamed the band Mazzy Star and the following year that band debuted with She Hangs Brightly. Building on his Paisley Underground roots by incorporating various Americana elements - blues, folk, country - into the Paisley bouillabaisse of psychedelia, dream pop and 60s rock, Mazzy Star took a few years before finding their feet with the hit 1994 single, "Fade Into You" (itself charting only a year or so after its parent album dropped), but in retrospect She Hangs Brightly is hardly a furtive creative effort. The song "Ghost Highway" sounds driven and self assured while setting the template for the band's metamorphosis from the Paisley overtones of Opal into the rootsier strains of Mazzy Star.



BONUS: Opal playing "Ghost Highway" live in 1988.