Monday, May 25

Hoping it ain't lost in the transition....

....as drop-d moves to new pastures. I usually hate reading my stuff but I actually enjoy reading this review of Mudhoney's last album. Sorry for this somewhat self-serving post but anyway..

With the grunge era now a nostalgic bong water stain on the ripped jeans of yesterday, all we veterans can do is snaffle up Nirvana albums on vinyl if we stumble across them, watch Pearl Jam get fat and old and reminisce over Youtube footage of Alice In Chains’ mesmerising MTV Unplugged performance from back in the day.

Mark Arm and his elder statesmen of that fruitful musical period, Mudhoney, have crawled out of the sticky dirt to crank out a new album, 20 years after giving the world a grunge classic with Touch Me I’m Sick, and thankfully they have summoned the spirits of their scuzzy, raw, anthemic youth to make an album that is as relevant now as it would have been in the early 90s. It begins with the cocksure sexual swagger of I’m Now, a song many of the pubeless indie cretins of today’s ‘alternative indie rock’ bands would lop off their fringes and pointy-shoe-clad feet to have penned.

Inside Out Over You crackles with feedback and psychedelic twiddlings over a Jefferson Airplane-style bassline while the title track grooves along to a chorus of “The lucky ones are lucky they’re not around.” - a wry take on grunge’s casualties.

Other highlights are the blues-kissed What’s This Thing, the garage rock musings of And The Shimmering Light and the screaming teenage delight of Tales of Terror.

This gem was recorded in just three and a half days and the confident brevity of the uncomplicated songs would definitely corroborate this, with most of the tracks around the 3 minute mark. There is a lusty, noisy, filthy, punk vibe fused into every song - with a side order of garage, blues and The Stooges - and a sense of urgency that makes it difficult to believe these gents are on their 8th album and 20th year together. It filled this writer with joy to be aurally transported back to a time when Sonic Youth, Bleach, lumberjack shirts and Seattle were at the forefront of my mind and here’s hoping that Mudhoney bottle the energy they harnessed for this recording and churn out many more albums as enjoyable in the coming years. This is how it is done. Indie pretenders take note.

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