Mudhoney - Search and Destroy

In 1988 Mudhoney made their Sub Pop debut with “Touch Me I’m Sick”, one of those singles that make history and are more than enough on their own to justify a career. Today the band, still three-quarters original lineup, is still going, carrying on its own Stooges-inspired discourse as the sole survivor of the first grunge generation that, straddling the turn of the Nineties, shook first Seattle and then the rest of the underground world with the force of an earthquake: despite a long spell on a major label and a steady, rich and consistently high-quality output, the band has nevertheless always been underrated by the mainstream audience, perhaps for never having suppressed their taste for the dirtiest, wildest rock'n'roll, or for never having flaunted - whether from inability or by choice is anyone's guess - the “cursed” charisma of Nirvana, the visionary allure of Alice In Chains, or the hard rock rigor (more or less contaminated) of Soundgarden.

The lines that follow, unfortunately, certainly can't reverse the tide, but at least they let us pay the tribute that's owed to one of (not just) our own small, great myths. Here comes sickness…

Raw Power

A couple of seconds of the unmistakable noise of a switched-on amplifier, with a voice in the background. Then, in rapid sequence, an extremely raw (naturally distorted) guitar riff, a yelp that introduces the entrance of the rhythm section, a more committed scream… and off into chaos. This is the opening of a track lasting 2' 32" that's crucial to the history of rock, one of those songs that can change your life like "Satisfaction", "Search And Destroy", or "New Rose". An epiphany. It's garage in a Sixties style, sure, but more powerful and vicious, filtered as it is through hard rock and punk. An anthem — though with no ties to anything sacred — set against the AIDS-phobic climate of the late Eighties, with vitriolic lyrics that, verse after verse, distill unease, anguish, death.

The song in question is called "Touch Me I'm Sick", and it takes up the A-side of a 7-inch single released in August 1988 by the then-small and unknown Sub Pop of Seattle: catalogue number 18, with an initial pressing of just 800 copies (no sleeve: the refined image of a toilet bowl would only become a feature of later reissues), backed on the flip side by "Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More", which harks back to the murky ballads of the most depraved and toxic Stooges. The band behind it was making its debut, yet it was hardly made up of novices, since all four members had already cut their teeth in a city rock scene that has pretty much always stood out for its vitality and nerve: Dan Peters, the youngest at twenty-one, had already pounded skins and cymbals for lesser-known outfits like Bundle Of Hiss and Feast; Aberdeen-born bassist Matt Lukin, born in 1964, had been a founder (alongside Buzz Osborne and Mike Dillard) of the legendary Melvins, with whom he'd played until their move to San Francisco; guitarist Steve Turner, a twenty-three-year-old Texas native, and singer/rhythm guitarist Mark "Arm" McLaughlin, a twenty-seven-year-old Californian, boasted an even broader range of experience, much of it shared together. Indeed, ever since 1983, when the former had joined the latter's Mr. Epp And The Calculations, the two had served together in the pivotal Green River and later (and in parallel) in Thrown Ups, preaching the gospel of an abrasive, heavy rock'n'roll in which — very much in tune with what the masters Black Flag and other acts on their SST label were doing — 70s hard rock, punk and metal all converged, streaked here and there with proto-noise tones, hints of murky psychedelia and even the odd faint new wave atmosphere.

If Thrown Ups — in which our heroes operated not as leaders but as supporting players — were, all things considered, a second-tier presence, Green River were both the forerunner and the hub of the phenomenon that by the late '80s would come to be labelled grunge. Formed in 1984 — the name has nothing to do with the Creedence Clearwater Revival album: it's a "tribute" to the serial killer known as "the Green River Killer", who was terrorizing the Seattle area at the time — the quintet took part, alongside Melvins, Malfunkshun, Skin Yard, Soundgarden and U-Men, in the historic 1986 compilation "Deep Six" (catalogue no. 001 for C/Z), became the first band to put out a record of its own on Sub Pop (the mini-LP "Dry As A Bone", summer 1987), and gave rise not only to Mudhoney but also to Pearl Jam, since the other two pillars of the line-up were bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard. In fact, Turner didn't stick around long: he resigned, feeling the ensemble's formula had grown mannered, right after recording guitars for the debut mini-LP "Come On Down" (Homestead, 1985), and was replaced by ex-Deranged Diction (and future Mother Love Bone and Love Battery) man Bruce Fairweather.

Arm, on the other hand, stayed on vocals for the band's entire arc, which came to an end in October 1987 — just a few months after the release of the excellent second mini-LP "Dry As A Bone", produced by Jack Endino — due to differences of opinion between the singer and the Ament/Gossard duo over the best recording strategy to pursue; sealing this brief but highly intense story, the album "Rehab Doll" came out posthumously in June 1988, solid but less fast (and fierce) in its unhealthy, derailing cocktail of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Stooges.

"Touch Me I'm Sick" hits the shops in the summer of 1988, just a few weeks after Mudhoney — incidentally, the name was lifted from a Russ Meyer softcore film none of them, oddly enough, had actually seen — made their live debut opening for Blood Circus. But for the band to start getting "seriously" noticed outside the Northwest, you have to wait until autumn and Superfuzz Bigmuff, a six-track mini-album — again on Sub Pop, again with Jack Endino behind the desk: worth carving into the annals are at least the lashing "No One Has", the stark, ghostly "Mudride" and the frantic "In'n'Out Of Grace" — which crosses the Atlantic and proves that the "new" sound coming out of Seattle is no flash in the pan.

With the financial troubles that had slowed its rise now resolved, Bruce Pavitt and (as of a few months earlier) Jonathan Poneman's label is about to become the decade's next big thing, losing Soundgarden along the way — but gaining Nirvana — and building up a catalogue that makes up for a lack of big sellers with a wealth of underground gems: among them, the January 1989 single on which Mudhoney cover "Halloween" by Sonic Youth, while the New Yorkers return the favour with a fabulous "Touch Me I'm Sick", which will effectively force the label to reissue the sold-out original version, still almost unknown in Europe at the time.

Two more killer singles, "You Got It" and "This Gift", then precede the album Mudhoney, where the quartet's wild charge is channelled into a slightly more polished sound that is no less abrasive or subversive for it: the Stooges-meets-Sonic Youth crossover of "Here Comes Sickness", the infected pop of "By Your Own Hands", the hysterical blues of "Get Into Yours" or the Velvet-flavoured hypnotics of "When Tomorrow Hits" are among the highlights of a tremendous record, a magnificent close to a year in which Mark, Steve, Matt and Dan win over John Peel, draw steady attention from American college radio, and — helped along by a support tour with Sonic Youth — earn the approval of the British press and public.

Spurred on by this more-than-positive response, the band then focuses on live work across the United States and Europe, limiting its releases to the standalone single "You're Gone" (recorded in Australia with Kent Steedman of the Celibate Rifles at the console) and a 12" EP put together by Melbourne's Au-Go-Go label, pulling covers of "Hate The Police" (Dicks), "Revolution" (Spacemen 3), "The Rose" (Bette Midler) and "Halloween" (Sonic Youth) from various 7-inches and compilations. And so it is that the second album, out in summer 1991, exhumes the acidic drive of Superfuzz Bigmuff, now reread in light of the band's greater chemistry and streaked with unexpected shades (a couple of tracks even flaunt an organ); all of it well put together in the recordings, cut on an eight-track by Conrad Uno. From "Let It Slide", the scorching lead single, to the mesmeric closing ballad "Check-Out Time", not forgetting the eclectic "Move Out" or the near-surf "Fuzz Gun '91", Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge — roughly speaking, a concept record about the search for self — is another direct hit, tight and searing in the way it showcases the band's garage-punk-hard (and here and there psycho) verve.

The commercial results are decidedly good, and Mudhoney, who had until then been immune to the call of the major-label sirens and faithful to the indie philosophy, break free of a financially struggling Sub Pop — taking their leave with the debut of the Monkeywrench, Mark and Steve's rock-blues side project with cult hero Tim Kerr — to try taking the big leap: after all, Hüsker Dü, R.E.M. and Sonic Youth, all signed to a major, had already proven that the underground could be good business, and the new, nasty, dirty and vicious strain of music called grunge has everything it needs to "corrupt" Western youth with checked flannel shirts, long hair and Seventies throwbacks. Soundgarden have been with A&M since 1989, Columbia has snapped up Alice In Chains, Geffen — on the advice of their protégés Sonic Youth — has poached the promising Kurt Cobain-led Nirvana right out from under Sub Pop, and Epic has secured the services of Mother Love Bone, who, after releasing a mini-album and an album for Mercury and losing singer Andrew Wood to an overdose, have brought in one Eddie Vedder in his place and taken the name Pearl Jam. "Nevermind" and "Ten" are about to land in millions of homes, and Reprise's A&R people, worried about being left behind, "settle" for Mark Arm and co. To say there will be a sizeable gap between (legitimate) expectations and what's actually gained is the kindest possible euphemism.

We Will Fall

One might perhaps expect a softening, but instead Piece Of Cake replays its predecessor's formula, starting with Conrad Uno's no-frills production: as usual, there are small unexpected instrumental flourishes and at least one surprising swerve (the thoroughly sick country of "Acetone"), but on the whole this major-label debut renews the band's degenerate spell of garage, hard rock, punk, blues and psychedelia, with Arm's raw, pained voice dominating thirteen tracks and four fragments that are now aggressive and clattering (the telling "No End In Sight", "I'm Spun", "Living Wreck" or lead single "Suck You Dry", with Blue Cheer walking arm in arm with Iggy) and now stretched out into litanies steeped in tension and perversion, like "Make It Now", the second single "Blinding Sun" (later covered by Jimmie Dale Gilmore on a split Sub Pop 7-inch with Mudhoney themselves) or the harsher "Take Me There". And yet, even as the hurricanes "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Alive" are pummelling the airwaves and laying the groundwork for a transformation of the so-called mainstream and of the record industry's whole landscape (with the unlikeliest of artists signing to majors: once the euphoria passed, plenty would be left picking up the pieces), Piece Of Cake stays in the shadows: released in October 1992, it makes the "Billboard" Top 200 but stalls at No. 189 (the band's best-ever chart placing in the US, as it happens).

At Reprise, however, they don't lose their nerve, and buoyed by the quantity and quality of the band's shows — including in terms of attendance — they double down. A year later, Five Dollar Bob's Mock Cooter Stew duly arrives, and behind its tongue-twister of a title it lines up five tracks recorded "live in the studio" with help from Curt Bloch, plus two outtakes from the Piece Of Cake sessions: twenty-three minutes that aren't exactly unforgettable, almost as if the lack of success — perhaps expected as much as merely hoped for — of the previous album had jammed the works. There's nothing incoherent or outright bad about it, but the impression is of a record put together without much real drive, (relatively) varied in style yet somehow hampered by a certain creative "formalism" that sits a little at odds with the urgency of the performances: tellingly, its best moment is a (thoroughly) revised and corrected version of "Make It Now", now retitled "Make It Now Again".

It takes pulling themselves back together to get past this impasse, and the now-veteran band does so by calling Jack Endino back in and trying — with hindsight — to recapture the glories of Superfuzz Bigmuff. It's well known that while fortune may be blind, bad luck sees perfectly well, and so it is that Kurt Cobain's suicide and the overwhelming mainstream breakthrough of melodic hardcore (Green Day, Offspring, Rancid) change the rules of the game: thus, when My Brother The Cow hits the market in March 1995, plenty of people unfortunately file it away as rearguard music… which sounds bizarre, given that grunge never counted modernity among its selling points to begin with. The problem, understandable as it is, isn't really one of substance but of mistaken perception: the record obviously doesn't match up to its model, because certain wild youthful fires can be lived once but not relived, yet it's well structured, full of energy, strongly motivated even if its arrangements seem to be the product of self-awareness and craft rather than instinct — not to mention the very free-jazz sax that lashes through 1995: something that had never happened before, and a touch of surprise is only natural, even though the Stooges had done it too — and perhaps geared more toward finding at least a measure of accessibility than the dirty, deranged fury of the '80s.

Striking in any case are the “garage” “Judgment, Rage, Retribution And Thyme” (yes, the title ironically nods to the third Simon & Garfunkel album), the caustic “Generation Spokesmodel” dedicated to Cobain, and “Into Yer Shtik”, in which Courtney Love is bluntly invited to “blow her brains out” too — all of them well received during shows played in front of packed, enthusiastic crowds both in the US and abroad.

Too bad sales leave something to be desired, at least by the standards of a label belonging to the Warner behemoth… but Mudhoney couldn't care less about the risk of their contract not being renewed, and they make the most of the available budget to create — in September 1998 — the excellent Tomorrow Hit Today, overseen in the studio by a roots-rock master like Jim Dickinson and polished off in Memphis: dark yet brilliant in its garage-blues-punk vein, it shines on “A Thousand Forms Of Mind” (a chilling dirge that unfolds between guitar assaults and insinuating organ lines), on “I Have To Laugh” (which conjures the ghost of the Gun Club), on “Night Of The Hunted” (the single: a bastardized pseudo-country number), on “Beneath The Valley Of The Underdogs” (a menacing ballad), and on the filthy, full-blooded cover of “Ghost” by the scandalously little-known Cheater Slicks. After Mudhoney and Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge (Superfuzz Bigmuff doesn't count: that one's in a league of its own), this is Mudhoney's masterpiece.

Despite yet another, widely acclaimed tour, copies sold are nonetheless meager, and the label decides it can't go on any longer; the quartet agrees, so the split causes no friction, with beneficial effects on the integrity of a catalog that shortly afterward — right after the announcement of Matt Lukin's resignation, worn out by the band's relentless touring schedule — swells with an extraordinary summary of the whole journey travelled so far. Released in early 2000 by a Sub Pop delighted to welcome the defectors back home, March To Fuzz — half classic “best of” (twenty-two tracks) and half selection of more or less curious and enticing rarities (thirty tracks, with a wealth of hidden gems) — has the air of a swan song, as well as an affectionate farewell to the band's most devoted fans from a group that has decided to throw in the towel. As if Lukin's departure weren't enough, further break-up rumors are fueled by the release of Monkeywrench's second grown-up effort and the launch of the New Strychnines project, centered on reinterpreting the repertoire of their “godfathers” the Sonics.

Real Cool Time

Indeed, at the dawn of the third millennium, Mudhoney are in a state of semi-hibernation, waiting for a spark to reignite the fire. A handful of dates in the Pacific Northwest and in Brazil, with Steve Dukich of Steel Wool on bass, do the trick: with old Australian friend Guy Maddison (whose résumé includes, among others, Lubricated Goat, Bloodloss and Monroe's Fur) recruited on four strings, in the summer of 2002 the group makes its official comeback, under the Sub Pop banner, with Since We've Became Translucent: nothing to do with the rather flavorless fruit of so many tired, opportunistic reunions, but rather an unmistakable certificate of good health and a desire to keep the adventure going, free at last from the “performance anxiety” induced by the success of peers in the same scene or by record executives.

Fully free to express its own nature, the quartet thus draws on its vast reservoir of experience and crafts a captivating hybrid of the various strands it has developed over the years: across ten songs that pay homage to the roots of rock'n'roll without bowing to its dogmas, there's blues and garage, hard rock and punk, soul and psychedelia, with the surprise of an effective horn section and overall consistency, despite the sessions having taken place in different times and places — one from 2000 even features former MC5 man Wayne Kramer on bass: Arm will return the favor in 2004 by singing with the reunited MC5 — and with four different producers. A formidable summa of the “Mudhoney style”, with the eight-and-a-half minutes of “Baby, Can You Dig The Light” magmatically opening hostilities amid echoes of “Fun House”, and the 7'40" of “Sonic Infusion” closing them with the same unsettling, jagged intensity: in between, pretty much everything you could want from a guitar album aiming to celebrate rock's dark side. No matter that the Seventies had ended more than two decades earlier.

Between side projects and tours (one in South America, opening for Pearl Jam, in late 2005: the Mexico City date will yield “Live Mud”), it takes almost four years for a new album to arrive: it's called Under A Billion Suns, and it essentially follows the formula of its predecessor, albeit with “only” three producers, shorter songs on average, slightly darker overall tones and a few politically charged lyrics (above all the explicit “Hard-On For War”, written with the Iraq war in mind). The garage sound is by now only an echo heard in flashes, and the backbone is a heavy, restless rock'n'roll as grounded in the earth as it is prone to spacey detours: the maturity of the songwriting, the abundance of instrumental flourishes, Arm's magnetic vocals (especially on the slower numbers) and the corrupted, enveloping mood all point to a band that has managed to find an enviable balance without smothering its instincts, drawing from its own (bright) past insights that may not look to the future but at least guarantee an exceptional present.

And it's only two years, instead, that lead to The Lucky Ones, which marks a return to a more essential sound (voice-guitar-bass-drums, nothing else), less sprawling and with generally sharper rhythmic structures: an urgent record, cut in a matter of days with a single producer (Tucker Martine, who has worked with, among others, the Decemberists, Bill Frisell, Sufjan Stevens, Laura Veirs, and some tracks on Under A Billion Suns), which celebrates the band's twentieth anniversary by recapturing its most primitive and dissolute attitude across eleven tracks and thirty-six minutes — even the running time feels like a throwback — of pure Stoogesian lava. Which brings to mind 1998 and “Velvet Goldmine”, Todd Haynes's film about the glam era, in which a band christened Wylde Ratttz, made up of Mike Watt, Steve Shelley, Thurston Moore, Don Fleming, Jim Dumbar Ron Asheton and Mark Arm, plays the Stooges: well, in the soundtrack's “T.V. Eye”, the singer's voice was replaced, at the last minute and without his knowledge, by that of actor Ewan McGregor. It's ironic, but above all sad, that probably the most credible Iggy Pop stand-in ever to have existed had to suffer such a slight.

Note — Garage twins: Mark and Steve beyond Mudhoney

As if the band's own prolific output weren't enough — which, besides the full-length albums, includes a countless array of singles, EPs and contributions to all sorts of compilations (material largely recovered, moreover, on some expanded reissues as well as on “March To Fuzz” and “Here Comes Sickness”) — Mudhoney can also boast a parallel discography that is even more extensive and sprawling, mostly “thanks to” Mark Arm and Steve Turner; to avoid spreading things too thin, this section won't account for what was made outside the quartet by bassists Matt Lukin (Melvins co-founder, present on every recording up to 1987) and Guy Maddison (whose main credits include Lubricated Goat, Bloodloss and Monroe's Fur), nor by drummer Dan Peters (who played, albeit briefly, with Nirvana, Screaming Trees and Love Battery).

Limiting ourselves, with a few minimal but justified exceptions, to what was released as albums, let's start then with Mr. Epp and The Calculations, the youthful band of Arm and Turner active between 1980 and 1984 and devoted to a hallucinated art-punk: the CD “Ridiculing The Apocalypse” (Box Dog/Super Electro 1996) rounded up almost everything the outfit scattered across vinyl and cassette releases, including the five tracks from the sole EP “Of Course I'm Happy, Why?” (Pravda 1982).

As for Green River, beyond a single (whose tracks were nonetheless reissued in different versions) and a handful of compilation appearances (worth remembering at least the historic “Deep Six”, “Another Pyrrhic Victory” and “Sub Pop 200”), everything else is concentrated in the mini-album “Come On Down” (Homestead 1985) and the CD “Dry As A Bone/Rehab Doll” (Sub Pop 1990), which pairs — adding three bonus tracks — the mini-album “Dry As A Bone” (Sub Pop 1987) with the album “Rehab Doll” (Sub Pop 1988).

Closing out the pre-Mudhoney chapter, there are the Thrown Ups, a searing, highly acidic project in which both Turner and Arm (on drums, no less!) took part between 1985 and 1991: the CD “Seven Years Golden” (Amphetamine Reptile 1997) collects the complete catalog, namely the 7" EPs “Felch” (1987), “Smiling Panties” (1987) and “Eat My Dump” (1988), the triple-EP box set “Melancholy Girlhole” (1990; released in Europe as an LP/CD under the title “The Thrown Ups”) — all originally put out by the famous Minneapolis noise label — plus three otherwise unreleased tracks (all that's missing, in short, are a few tracks once scattered across more or less obscure compilations).

The main side project set up with Mudhoney already up and running is Monkeywrench, with Mark and Steve (here on bass) alongside Tim Price (U-Men, Gas Huffer), Tim Kerr (Poison 13, Big Boys, Jack O' Fire, Lord High Fixers and much more) and Martin Bland (Lubricated Goat, Bloodloss): reconvened every eight years, this scorching partnership — steeped in garage-blues more or less laced with psychedelia — has so far produced three albums: “Clean As A Broke-Dick Dog” (Sub Pop 1992), “Electric Children” (Estrus/Sweet Nothing 2000) and “Gabriel's Horn” (Birdman 2008); somewhat “collateral” to this are the savage one-off Bushpig, in which the fearsome pair team up with Martin Bland, future bandmate-to-be Guy Maddison (Bloodloss) and a couple of members of King Snake Roost (a self-titled album, vinyl only, PGK 1990), and New Strychnines, a Sonics cover band — also featuring Dan Peters and Tom Price — responsible for “The New Original Sonic Sound” (Birdman 2003).

For the sake of (partial) completeness, worth mentioning too are Arm's stint in the searing Bloodloss (across three albums: “In A Gadda Da Change”, Sympathy 1993; “Live My Way”, Reprise/Warner 1995; “Misty”, Au-Go-Go 1996) and Turner's in Sad & Lonelys (“Sad & Lonelys”, Super Electro 1991; lo-fi punk'n'roll) and, on bass, in Fall-Outs (just for “The Fall-Outs”, Super Electro 1992), a trio leaning toward garage-pop.

Dulcis (???) in fundo, the solo careers. Steve Turner's has already produced four works that fall within a folk-rock territory which, starting from the intimism of "Searching For Melody" (Roslyn, 2003) and the mini-album "A Beautiful Winter" (Houston Party, 2004), later took on more heated and at times jagged tones on "Steve Turner And His Bad Ideas" (Roslyn, 2004) and "New Wave Punk Asshole" (Funhouse, 2006). Mark Arm's solo output, meanwhile, is almost invisible: just one 7", "The Freewheelin' Mark Arm" (Sub Pop, 1990), featuring a cover of "Masters Of War" and a sleeve that pays caustic homage to Bob Dylan himself.

Time passes for everyone, it's true, but with this bunch of adorable rogues it seems to be far more forgiving than it has been with many colleagues from the same scene. Judging solely by the opening of this Vanishing Point, you'd be inclined to think otherwise. The sluggish ignition of "Slipping Away", in the vein of pure-craft rock'n'roll with the handbrake pulled tight out of excessive self-discipline, turns into a genuine false start with "I Like It Small", where Steve Turner's considerable muscular approach suffers from one too many banalities, indulging the usual (somewhat worn-out) autopilot moves, and not even an uncharacteristically listless Mark Arm manages to reverse the inertia. Luckily, this stumble remains the only sour note on an album that's no less lean and essential than its direct predecessor, balanced yet instinctive like every other work by the Seattle outfit.

The real tear, paradoxically, comes right away with the heavy artillery of the rather bland "What To Do With the Neutral", where the frontman redeems himself by mimetically embracing the lyricism of another of golden-era Seattle's forgotten heroes, Shawn Smith of the Satchel adventure (does anyone remember their splendid "The Family"?), albeit filtered through the raw, whiny cut that defines his own style. But it's with the speed, the rough candor, the impertinence and the right amount of hysteria of "Chardonnay" that Mudhoney really seem to recapture the shine of the good old days: abrasive madness, impact, scratches and a simply striking cohesion. It may just be a rerun built on familiar riffs and clichés - as detractors will be quick to point out - but there's no doubt it's a pleasure to find the band in such form after all these years, with the Stooges and Black Flag still shining in their firmament as guiding stars, and the singer's (now well into his fifties) crumpled roar guaranteeing moments of good cheer and reassurance for all the nostalgics. Through the belly of the record run, without a break, hard rock impressions with the right dose of grime ("The Only Son of The Widow From Nain"), subtle echoes of early garage-punk in the obsessive, almost autistic constructions that Mark keeps pushing over the top ("I Don't Remember You"), plus his usual, excellent turn as a stand-in for the "Iguana", venomous and devilish in glorifying domestic bliss with that unmistakable acidic voice ("In This Rubber Tomb").

Dedicated to friend (and Sub Pop mentor) Andy Kotowicz, who recently passed away, "Sing This Song of Joy" doesn't hold back from dusting off the epic tone of certain fine episodes from the band's early-maturity years (the excellent "My Brother the Cow" and "Tomorrow Hit Today", to be precise), while the closer stays just as strong and even manages to be visionary in its own way. It flashes, for all to see, the cheeky grin of one of the most upstanding bands still around, moving in its directness even without cheap effects or insincere emphasis, and fiercely determined not to pull the plug. There's no point expecting new sounds or attitudes from the Bellevue foursome, because, deep down, things are more than fine as they are. Resistant to any hint of going soft, Mudhoney bask in the illusion of an eternal present, and it hardly matters that a full twenty-five years have gone by since "Touch Me, I'm Sick". In the tireless stubbornness of a band that has always honestly believed in what it was doing, even without ever aiming too high, yet staying true to its own aesthetic creed and a certain musical philosophy, lies the ultimate proof of their integrity. Mudhoney are true losers, at the heart of a scene and an era without ever being its leading lights. But losers of the finest kind, beloved by fans and by the staff of their longtime label alike, and ultimately deserving of total respect. Even at the tail end of these scant thirty-five minutes, the dust kicked up by the phenomenal rhythm engine of the Peters/Maddison duo and by the electric spirals of the evergreen Turner remains considerable. You can bet that Mark Arm and his cronies will make sure it doesn't have time to settle before a new blow is struck.

Not that back in 2013, on Vanishing Point, Mudhoney were particularly thrilled with how things were going, but - listening to Digital Garbage - whatever has happened around the world over the last five years seems to have left them furious. And inspired. There's plenty here for everyone, of course there's plenty for the so-called alt-right, but the title and cover of the Seattle band's eleventh album make it quite clear: Mark Arm and his crew of grunge rogues are mainly going after the internet. A genuine social media forge of idiotic ideologies, vacuous hedonism and assorted intolerance. Mudhoney's attacks stand out for their variety. "Nerve Attack" is brutal, rough garage rock driven by a relentless bassline, "Please Mr. Gunman" closes in grand style with Arm screaming hysterically amid slithering guitars and a tapping piano. Then there's the unexpected, demented irony of "Kill Yourself Live". Five hilarious minutes of psychedelic garage that twist the title of a Queen hit - "Keep Yourself Alive" - to mock the epidemic emptiness of the modern youth endlessly chasing likes on social networks. “Kill yourself live/ Kill yourself live/ Kill yourself live/ Kill yourself live/ Do it for the likes/ Be creative/ Show us what you got/ Make it clean and quick/ Or do it nasty and sick/ Use a filter with bunny ears/ Maybe add some dancing fruit/ Lock yourself in the freezer/ Get naked and peel off your skin!”; brilliant in their own way. Stirred by a mephistophelic harmonica, "Next Mass Extinction" is an apocalyptic closer - if you don't count the half-minute "Oh Yeah" - yet its ending is relaxed, opening into an airy melody that almost makes its title sound like a wish.

A few riffs are tossed off somewhat on autopilot - "Hey Neanderfuck" - and, more generally, there's practically no desire to update their sound or add anything new to it, but that's probably for the best. If Mudhoney are still around and are probably the only Seattle Grunge survivors still able to say something worth hearing, it's precisely because they've always limited themselves to doing only and exactly what they know how to do. A telling proof of this is the dark sludge of "Night And Fog", whose granite-like, murky riff flips the playful mood built by the preceding "Kill Yourself Live".

In 2023, after 34 years of career, comes Plastic Eternity, the post-pandemic album. The groove is the kind you remember, the load of intoxicating psychedelic fumes enables constant connections to sixties vibrations, the lyrics are still corrosive and hit hard on climate urgency (Plasticity), on the loss of workers' rights due to globalization (Human Stock Capital), against prevailing do-goodism (Flush The Fascists) and on the ongoing challenge to runaway consumerism (Cascades Of Crap). Perhaps this album is less direct than its predecessor, where the technological invasion was the narrative center, and compared to "Digital Garbage" it also lacks as sharp a hit as "Kill Yourself Live". So, as we said, the tracks that work best are the ones most tied to the old, tried-and-tested formula: the Fuzztones-flavored garage of "Souvenir Of My Trip", the obsessive, hallucinogenic percussion of "Almost Everything", the descents into hell somewhere between Radio Birdman and Stooges-style yelps on "Move Under" and "Here Comes The Flood", the lysergic crescendos of "Severed Dreams In The Sleeper Cell", the punk fury of "Human Stock Capital" and "Plasticity", a sort of eco-flavored "Anarchy In The UK".

When, rarely, Mudhoney stray off the beaten path, the results can be a bit disorienting, as in "Flush The Fascists", driven by a hiccuping, synth-based propulsion. Moving is the well-deserved homage/tribute to the legendary former Pere Ubu guitarist on "Tom Herman's Hermit", and truly hilarious is the closer "Little Dogs", where over a fragile, quavering guitar that sounds like it stepped straight out of "Psychedelic Jungle" by the Cramps, Mudhoney reveal their devotion to their beloved little dogs, further proof that beneath those flannel shirts, symbol of grunge's roaring years, beat soft and sentimental hearts. For this irreverent streak combined with their long career, you can't help but love them, regardless of how groundbreaking this album actually is.

(Taken from Mucchio Extra issue 30, autumn 2008)

("Vanishing Point" written by Stefano Ferreri, "Digital Garbage" written by Michele Corrado, "Plastic Eternity" written by Lorenzo Montefreddo)

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition