Squirrel Bait - Chaos in Paradise

In 1986 the guitars of Slint's Brian McMahan and Bitch Magnet's David Grubbs (also in Bastro and Gastr del Sol), supremely backed by the voice of Peter Searcy, the drums of Ben Daughtrey and the bass of Clark Johnson, came together for the 25 minutes of Skag Heaven. That was enough to leave an indelible mark on rock music.

With the first era of punk, hardcore and no-wave well and truly over, the mid-'80s saw a whole string of brilliant bands speculating on whatever was intellectually stimulating in those disruptive styles: the result was music that was contaminated in form, extreme, total, apocalyptic in content; the children proved more mature and more worthy of esteem than their parents, but were doomed to the ignominy of unpopularity, given how their impact was spread thin over time, never coalescing into a movement, and given the anarchic nihilism at the core of what "guided" them. The Minutemen took hardcore into jazz, Flipper took it into Velvet Underground-style noise (brilliantly renamed and developed further by Sonic Youth), Mission of Burma harnessed it within the new-wave rock of Television, Husker Du channeled it into tragic pop, and Fear were the first to mix it all together, opening up the two parallel and opposite paths of the workmanlike Faith No More and the greatest of them all, the Pixies.

Right in the middle of all this, in that year of '86, stand Squirrel Bait: for 25 minutes, but 25 minutes of a band, of tight musicianship and total solidarity in the cause of the most alienated and dramatic self-flagellating nihilism. Prong (all the nobler the more unheard they went) would carry this discourse forward for 10 years (from '86 to '96), Helmet for 7 (from '90 to '97).

An obsessive, deflagrating metallic slowness in the vein of Swans, a hoarse and disconsolate cycle of weeping in the Husker Du mold (Searcy's mournful howl is no less moving or total than Mould's: and it's beautifully refined, with an elegance of pain and compassion that finds itself humbled, like every other voice for that matter, only before the unreachable Frank Black): this is Squirrel Bait, who from their one and only appearance are destined to land forever in the hearts of those capable of appreciating the deeply intimate dismay that is uniquely theirs.

"King Dynamite" is an instant masterpiece: cycle after cycle of laments turned in on themselves, with an effect no less powerful than Nick Cave's blend of drama and elegy, violence and refinement. Ben Daughtrey proves himself one of the best drummers in the world. Searcy's faint voice, always on the edge, breathless, adolescent, moving and pathetic, reigns supreme.

"Virgil's Return" changes the patterns and tempos and reveals the secret of Squirrel Bait's extreme class: not noise plus melody (speed-slowness) in predictable, telegraphed contrast, but noise and speed so fixed that they produce a slow effect, and then, whispered, hidden like a precious jewel box, the tear that immortalizes every one of their damnably fascinating, dusty bursts.

"Black Light Poster Child" confirms, in a different but no lesser form, exactly what's just been said.

"Choose Your Poison" shapes up as a second masterpiece: within the elusive economy of the whole, all that's left is to tear your hands raw either applauding or blinding and clawing your own face, convinced that, with this, you've already seen it all.

"Short Straw Wirs" is a third masterpiece: adrift, hopelessly unstoppable in its mortally delicate advance, whoever sings, whoever plays, dies, but not the listener, who is in no way assaulted or overwhelmed by this devilish grace.

"Kick the Cat" is a machine-gun burst of cloud-like shapes in its structure and multiple goings-on, remarkably original and packed full of devices that would all later be picked up in the years to come. With this music, we're a full 10 years ahead of what fake "alternative" acts would later peddle to pseudo-connoisseurs.

"Too Close to the Fire" marks a return to unrestrained weeping, a lament all the more cathartic for the listener the more fatal it is for whoever performs it.

"Slake Train Coming" is the fury of Motorhead interrupted by searing sobs in a noise effect.

"Rose Island Road" is an instrumental that steals a chord from an already immortal Killing Joke: one of the most influential and revolutionary albums of all time, which among other things featured "S.O.36".

"Tape from California" is the inevitable agonizing descent into yet another (the fourth) masterpiece. It drips with the superiority of those who have always been initiated into misery: one last shrug of the shoulders before the close of an album that wanted to console its listener (and at the end of the listen, you're left alone with no consolation at all) and to serve as a requiem for its own author (and at the end of the work, all that awaits is death, already far too often a temptress).

The diaspora of Squirrel Bait would go on to spawn bands of the caliber of Slint, For Carnation, Bitch Magnet, Bastro, Gastr Del Sol, King Kong and Palace.

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