Urge Overkill - Pop Fiction

They fished the title from the lyrics of a Parliament song, “Funkentelechy”, but it was surely just the first of an endless series of eccentricities, rather than a conscious homage to George Clinton's musical creation. Even digging deep into the dustbin of Urge Overkill's eighties past, there's no way to find even an accidental link to the synthesized funk or psychedelic soul of the famous Detroit outfit. If, on the other hand, one sticks to the raw early-days scenario, there's a real risk of drowning in the dreadful swamp of noise-rock conformism the band expressed in that phase of pure naivety. An adherence to the model of Big Black or Rapeman that's far from incomprehensible, considering that on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, young singer and guitarist Nathan “National Kato” Kaatrud (Nash to his friends) was none other than the roommate of Steve Albini, before being thrown out in near disgrace given his poor academic results. It's in those corridors that the fateful meeting with Eddie “King” Roeser, also a singer and guitarist, took place, and it's in the university basement that in 1985 the two took their first uncertain amateur steps (together with drummer Pat Byrne).

The expulsion seemed to steer the eccentric Nash toward his true passion, graphic design, but it was his friend Steve who convinced him not to throw in the towel, roped him into an off-the-cuff collaboration under the name Run Nigger Run — featured with the track “Pray I Don't Kill You Faggot” on the no-wave compilation “Tellus #10” — and insisted that this unlikely but intriguing three-piece give itself a future, thanks in part to an opportunity he personally offered: the EP Strange, I came out a few months later on Albini's own label, Ruthless, and stands as the very first production by the Chicago guru on a project that wasn't his own.

It's no small detail.

You don't get out of the Eighties alive?

Grim, buried, raw, caught between rock-blues schematics and flirtations with noise terrorism. Urge Overkill present themselves as a wild but still naive outfit, holed up in the reassuring cage of an attitude, with too much shouting passed off as singing. Faced with those shots fired without any restraint, or the vocal parts that betray the decidedly rough-and-ready live nature of the recordings, one already senses a considerable self-assurance, unusual given the absolute-rookie résumé the young musicians from Minneapolis can boast. There's posturing, true, but there are a few interesting ideas on record (“Art Of Man”), and in chasing the hard, pure underground sound of their friends in Big Black, the kids do get there. Beyond the derivative base, one recognizes a lineup that's still fairly unspoiled and furious. The pitch-black punk assaults of the trio (“My New Church” or the post-hardcore scribble “Snakemobile”, as amateurish as it is genuine) sound especially jagged and hard to digest, at least compared to what the band (and Albini himself) would produce at the peak of their career a few years later.

Right at the tail end of the second side, ironically dubbed “Hetero Side” (as opposed to the first, “Homo Side”), they opt for greater intelligibility, especially in the vocal lines, with the band's potential managing to assert itself more clearly. All things considered, Strange, I thus emerges as a surly, unkempt debut, but not without promising options, for those able to spot them.

Among the few to take notice of the band, partly thanks to their young patron's intercession, were fortunately the people running Touch & Go, the Chicago label that already had Jesus Lizard and Butthole Surfers under contract, not to mention Big Black. Joining the label that defined the post-hardcore scene, though it happened quietly and through the back door, was a considerable confidence boost for Urge Overkill, who spent the following two years toughening up further through relentless live work. When they finally felt ready for their official full-length debut, a new bandmate, Kriss Bataille, was sitting behind the drums, while it was once again Steve Albini who offered to capture in the studio all the energy displayed in their rowdy live shows. Things, however, didn't go at all as hoped. What you hear on Jesus Urge Superstar is a spartan, extremely noisy ragtag outfit, badly hampered by the mentor's barely-more-than-amateurish, no-frills production, but also by writing that was still rather elementary. A granite-hard, furious, charmingly chaotic punk-rock that was received rather poorly by the very few critics who caught it, though it doesn't deserve the dismissive verdicts it was invariably saddled with.

The sound is dark, buried, routinely undermined by lo-fi atrocities. Though more didactic than it would later become, the band still comes across as genuine here, grim, nasty in just the right way, with more than one inflection in line with the dictates of the rising grunge wave (“Very Sad Trousers” is a telling example).

A few good ideas surface here and there (as in the fine, noise-garage torrent of “Head On”, not so far removed from the early EPs of the Soundgarden), while the band's expressive direction still seems anchored to the raw ferment of the present rather than pushing toward the curious hard-rock revisionism that will come later. On “Your Friend Is Insane”, a still-green Kato dares to try out that sensual-bastard tone he'll go on to perfect in later years, and in this first, formally miserable and brutish showing, it's almost endearing. In the muddle of “Crown Of Laffs” his hoarse, still very studied voice really has to turn somersaults to be heard, but the result — a reactionary pub-rock with a basement-tape sound — is sadly not among the most flattering. The crooner-like pose adopted on “Dubbledead” is no less out of place, but at least it hints at some of the most dazzling moves within the lead singer's range, along with an already bold change of pace.

Confusion reigns supreme, and in the tangle you can barely catch an appreciable flare of the guitars. The racket, though, is so blanket and so knotted up — to the complete detriment of the vocals — that getting tired of it quickly seems almost inevitable. Anyone who loved the band in their near-mainstream, occasional-hits incarnation of the Nineties will honestly struggle, in any case, looking back at this black, theatrical murk, made all the more indigestible by the coarse, cut-rate performance of then-drummer Kriss Bataille, pressed into service as an impromptu singer on “Dump Dump Dump”.

The album, which closes on a melancholy, rancid-tinged instrumental filler (“Easter '88”), is little more than an overexposed snapshot of the brazen Chicago of the no-wave glory days — significant more as a document of an aesthetic than for the actual value of the work itself, which is objectively modest. Urge Overkill do show themselves to be reasonably toned and muscular here (just listen to “The Polaroid Doll”), granted, but it's still hard to believe they could ever be truly proud of a record like this: a debut like Jesus Urge Superstar, in all honesty, doesn't exactly encourage betting much on their name — yet some did anyway, Touch & Go first and foremost.

Their music, deep down, is about to change.

In Kurt Cobain's Pantheon

Only a few months pass before the Chicago trio is already ready to get back in the game. Less than a year, all told, yet the shift is a significant one. Bataille gets the boot, replaced by the more promising Jack "The Jaguar" Watt, freshly resigned from Baron Lesh. The revamped Urge Overkill, evidently unhappy with the modest technical results of their debut, also opt for a change behind the mixing desk, bidding farewell to their friend Albini and entrusting themselves to a still little-known producer, thirty-five-year-old Bryan "Butch Vig" Vigorson, who had made a name for himself at Touch & Go with his excellent work for Killdozer. As if that weren't enough, they orchestrate a shrewd image makeover, complete with pretentious vintage outfits (some would say "pimp-like"), matching regulation jackets and longer, better-groomed hair, all aimed at boosting their chances of being remembered within the colorful circus of alternative music. The real revolution, though, happens on the musical front, with a partial disavowal of their raw early-days approach.

The sophomore effort Americruiser thus saw the light of day in 1990, and it didn't go unnoticed on the college-radio circuit. Brasher and already far more sharply defined than its predecessor, Urge Overkill juggle scuzzy hard-rock, acid stylizations and hardcore-punk, occasionally allowing themselves a theatrical digression in the form of a tasty wink at glam schematics (“Out On The Airstrip”) or a parody of testosterone-fueled rocker machismo (the closing section of “Smokehouse”, forceful but a bit of an end in itself). Behind the rough, jagged-edged cut, some tracks (“Blow Chopper”) are still hampered here and there by simplistic clichés or clumsy, almost pub-rock-grade songwriting, whose immediacy and underlying caricature are both its greatest strengths and its most obvious limits. A touch wooden, the band leans mainly on Kato's paranoid vocal delivery, but also, now and then, on some nice aestheticizing guitar work from him or from Roeser (who also plays bass), as on “76 Ball”, for example.

At this stage of open transition, the band seems to have several decent ideas in store but still looks hamstrung by indecision, unsure of how best to develop them in a fully coherent way. Among the best moments is the rounder, more parodic "Empire Builder", a grotesque, suitably frayed rave-up that's also a jab at country rhetoric and Yankee gigantism, topped off with a hoarse, schizoid flare-up at the end. The step forward is evident in terms of sound, but also in a songwriting approach that already reveals a certain leaning toward easy-listening substance (the single “Ticket To L.A.”), a weapon the Chicago troublemakers will keep sharpening further down the line. It's the other single, though, the more straightforward “Faroutski”, that hints clearly enough at the direction the band will choose to take next, once it sniffs out the golden opportunities of so-called "arena-rock". Looked at closely, it's also a mighty rhythmic statement, all muscle and sonic ramparts, that brings out the wildest side of the American trio.

A couple of interesting bonus tracks round out the picture on later editions: the cover of Jimmy Webb's evergreen “Wichita Lineman”, a three-year-old seven-inch recycled at just the right moment, lush and vibrant with its ecstatic, crepuscular outlook and its cut-price epic quality that almost automatically invites a singalong; and the more sinister “Eggs”, which instead offers up a promise of alienation, narcotic attachment and deviant, loopy chanting that will later find new echoes and be put to good use elsewhere. Jaguar's drumming is martial, the riffs from the two electric centrifuges are atrociously crude and insistent, and the two frontmen remain stubbornly unwilling to concede anything in the way of good form, even scornful in their display of raw indifference: to claim that Butch Vig put a turbo engine on a lineup that was still blissfully anarchic, resistant to the reins and over the top, doesn't seem like an exaggeration at all. Americruiser is a record that radiates huge energy, even if in an inconsistent way and with a few too many formal tangles. Its contribution to the band's climb toward success, in any case, is significant.

If nothing else, it wins over the hearts of the very young Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic — who had long been ready to do anything to join the Touch & Go roster — who don't hold back their admiration for their colleagues and for Butch Vig. It's no coincidence that they'll choose the latter (at the end of 1991, a few months after the still-green Smashing Pumpkins of “Gish”) to produce their second album, “Nevermind”, destined for epoch-making success and a surge in popularity for everyone involved. Among the curiosities tied to Kato and Roeser's band, this foresight in enlisting the help of figures of absolute excellence, before they rose to the status of mixing-board deities, remains a strange yet pleasant exclusive — one that would also have further repercussions, even if confined to the indie orbit.

In the meantime, for their new record, our heroes decide to once again call on that increasingly sought-after collaborator. Contrary to expectations, though, they have no intention of simply striking while the iron of its predecessor is still hot, and choose instead to take a risk. First of all, they need to find a replacement for Watt, who returns to the ranks of the obscure Baron Lesh, and the choice couldn't be more fortunate: the man hired is a young Chicago drummer, John Richard Rowan, aka Blackie Onassis, who has only one but significant experience behind him, alongside Tim Rutili and the late Glynis Johnson in Friends Of Betty (in effect the first incarnation of Red Red Meat, from which he's clearly excluded). His hunger, his mad streak and his instant chemistry with Nash and King can only make a difference: from here until their breakup, Urge Overkill will never change their lineup again, and their rise will be irresistible.

The Supersonic Storybook, in stores from March 1991, leans toward a Stones-style rock'n'roll with the most obvious easy-listening temptations, laced with power-pop jabs reminiscent of the Cheap Trick gospel and a welcome leaning toward punk: in effect a sonic hodgepodge inspired by the roaring seventies that the trio will go on refining bit by bit, and which represents their own take on primal indie-rock — less slacker than their contemporaries Pavement, more eccentric (with that fine wardrobe of garish velvet jackets and gaudy medallions), and more (burlesquely) reactionary. “The Kids Are Insane” is a calling card of rare effectiveness: hulking riffs, electric twists and turns, bubblegum diversions farmed out to the farfisa and a tasty hard-rock send-up — its cartoonish dimension and jokey vocal clearly on display — arriving somewhat ahead of the bastard outbursts of the Blues Explosion. If the sound has been partly trimmed down and cleaned up, that lovable swaggering pose remains fully over the top.

The Urge Overkill brand begins to take on a distinctive shape: the guitars have the sharp-edged texture of old sheet metal, the amplifiers joyfully spew feedback, and the two ringleaders bark out their hoarse demands. This is alt-rock that looks to the lessons of the classics, but flips their perspective with a rotten, ironic and sullen inclination all at once (frequent tempo changes, acid detours, toxic intonation) that, not for nothing, will send several of Seattle's new sensations — not just Nirvana — into raptures.

A harrowing work, yet full of unexpected flashes of radiance, as in the thrilling “What Is Artane?”, this third album celebrates a magical compromise between muscle, distortion, melody and even choral decorative flourishes, all without muffling the urgency behind its own appetite. With “(Today Is) Blackie's Birthday” the tone turns, if anything, even more playful, under the banner of the band's new unhinged member, name-checked in the title itself. “Emmaline”, a frayed, sly and intoxicating declaration of love, best embodies romanticism as declined by Kato and Roeser — decadent rogues running at full throttle with their claws ready to scratch. Seen from this angle too, the album — just nine tracks, though packed with ideas and substance — can really be read as a kind of dress rehearsal for the excellence the band would go on to develop, to obvious profit, over the following two chapters of their recording career.

Scrappy, with the stumbling twang of their guitars, Urge Overkill wound with kindness, but they don't hold back from stunning listeners with that ever-unwelcoming wall of guitars, whose melodic lines remain mocking and elusive. Theirs is a rock stuffed with stylizations, scowling looks, intestinal ulcers and grotesque whims, which in rare cases (“Bionic Revolution”) shows off a curious leaning toward cross-pollination, a legacy of the more compromised forays into soul and black music by the Richards/Jagger firm: a stimulating hypothesis, this last one, sadly destined to be shelved in favor of easier, more profitable alternatives. The chaotic expressionism of “Henough” further muddies the waters, while the Touch & Go-brand jagged edges that surface without a break work the listener over in an experience that nonetheless goes beyond the merely physical, favoring instead the label's dazed storytelling and its brash, cocky nature.

The imprint remains abrasive right up to the fabulous send-off of "Theme From Navajo", where the rough edges reach their peak and the pervasive grime no longer bothers to hide a deep sense of despair, of painful, indelible defeat. This is the first, most authoritative celebration of the dropout, one that will soon find an actual, literal translation into a name.

Ingratiating, theatrical, filthy and highly entertaining, Urge Overkill unleash a martial stride and a genuinely infectious, spaced-out tone. The Supersonic Storybook is the record that definitively raises the stakes and sets out to win over the right listeners, securing the Chicago trio three years of great fortune and well-deserved pockets of popularity.

Tarantolati e Tarantinati

The trio enjoys the very positive reviews of their latest record, but shows no intention of resting on their laurels or shutting the engines off. Despite not having enough material on hand for a new album, the band still has a few good songs to offer and starts thinking about a mini-collection, perhaps enriched with a couple of tasty covers of other people's songs. Released in June 1992, the EP Stull represents a singular chapter in their discography, but dismissing it as a minor episode would be far too reductive. It opens with a fantastic cover of Neil Diamond's "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon": an acrid, scorching, dusty expression of a decadent, loser's romanticism, and of an epic quality that is both miserable and beautiful. No one could imagine that this reinterpretation, successful yet seemingly unassuming, would come to be judged by almost everyone as better than the original. No one, above all, could predict that within two years it would become Urge Overkill's best-known song. In between, as luck would have it for the band, a copy of the record was bought for a few cents at a megastore by a young filmmaker with a passion for retro curiosities and musical oddities, a director still on the hunt for a standout track to soundtrack one of the key scenes in his latest film. Hearing that opening track was enough to seal it: so it will be Nash Kato's voice that accompanies the black-bobbed Uma Thurman as she dances alone before her near-fatal overdose in "Pulp Fiction". The song, now risen to the status of an emblem of musical Tarantino-ism, will prove a formidable shortcut to success for the band, but also, in a sense, a kind of cruel sentence.

But the EP, produced by Kramer (already behind Galaxie 500's "Today" and "On Fire") is much more than just this lucky gem. The other cover ("Stitches", by the Alan Milman Sect) is a frothing-at-the-mouth punk rampage that harks back to their obscure, purely uncompromising beginnings: enjoyable, no-frills and "just for fun", as the song's own mantra puts it. With a backbone of nerve and blues-rock pulp, of stinging desert heat, set against substantial vocal flourishes (deeply Yankee themselves, and more geared towards a raucous revivalist streak), the title track instead comes across as a loose, dust-cloud-like dissertation that once again profitably appropriates the breath and freedom of the sixties.

The blues moods are then reaffirmed by "What's This Generation Coming To?", which combines them with the crooked brutality of their friends Nirvana, almost as if it were a personal funeral eulogy ante litteram for Generation X. The band sounds razor-sharp, in peak form, and its urgency demands attention.

The coordinates of the records to come are set out like a promise on "(Now That's) The Barclords", in the most authoritative way and with remarkable self-awareness, amid roaring alt-rock, glam pranks and an admirable instinct for pop. Looking back, this is already American indie rock of the Nineties, the most acidic and still-bleeding kind, in one of its earliest (and least corrupted) expressions. The closing track, "Goodbye To Guyville", a wrenching love song that would go on to inspire the celebrated debut of future friend Liz Phair, circles back to the twilight mood of the far more celebrated opener for one more page of elusive, sublime despair.

Although they remain utter unknowns in Europe, back home Urge Overkill are already a cult band. Credit goes to Stull, which sells reasonably well, but above all to the many live appearances in the wake of Cobain and co., by now global stars, as well as Pearl Jam. The people at Touch & Go, however, are unhappy, complaining that the band should have delivered them an LP. At that point Geffen, Nirvana's own major label, steps in with an offer the three Chicagoans cannot refuse. Steve Albini, a prominent figure within the Chicago label, is left stunned, hurling a curse at his former friends and never missing an occasion afterwards to badmouth them, repeatedly calling them the worst band he's ever had the misfortune to work with.

Meanwhile, our heroes already have several new songs in the works, so it takes only a few months before their fourth full-length album sees the light of day: the dizzying barrage of clichés that is Saturation (crafted by up-and-coming producers Joe and Phil Nicolo – aka The Butcher Brothers – later trusted producers for Cypress Hill and Billy Joel). The cover, true to the band's tradition, is hideous: the logo with the UO acronym looms large on the attached sticker and over the background image, but for once it ends up representing a sun-drenched record that is also semantically consistent with the album's own mood and color palette.

Sleek, chrome-plated, roaring: the showroom-ready "Sister Havana" establishes itself as the first true hit of their career, miraculously balanced between languid posing and gleeful bravado. The guitars ham it up in an eternal state of grace, while Kato and Roeser duel with their voices, flung headlong into a party running at full throttle. "Positive Bleeding", the other big gun and the triumphant manifesto of a school that was never actually founded, is just a stone's throw away. Right in the middle, like a particularly treacherous sandwich filling, comes the vinegary pop sneer at grunge clichés orchestrated by the marching, off-the-rails "Tequila Sundae". The power-pop aimed at an already dying Generation X is twisted rancid, corrupted by feedback within its sixties lifeblood and warped into a grotesque smirk.

Supremely sharp, the new Urge Overkill flirt with the trendiest sensations of the moment purely for the pleasure of outdoing them with a kitsch caricature in which everything is pushed to excess, from the swings between slovenly and schizoid tones to the sheer delight in the saturation inevitably evoked by the title. They are jubilant populists, as nasty as the most tormented of Seattle rockers, but carrying a very different kind of disillusionment on their shoulders and a flair for levity that is nothing short of exhilarating. The record's impact on the listener is devastating.

Roeser favors clearer, sunnier solutions, with an admirable balance of acoustic and electric and a little weakness for killer sunshine refrains ("Back On Me"). The band's garage-saboteur streak, that of the grubby adventurers of deviant alternative rock, never fades away, though, and the interludes are ghastly pools of reverb laid out like traps for the unwary. In the intro to "Crackbabies" a music box lures in the unsuspecting before dumping the usual toxic sludge and a filthy, hyper-amplified, autistic earworm on top of them.

The collection takes shape as a bloodthirsty easy-listening war machine. The truly winning spirit here is that of Onassis, the anarchic, unhinged soul of a band otherwise held together by the magical amalgam of Kato's pop overdose and Roeser's rock discipline. The drummer turns songwriter and singer for a couple of episodes in which the band's weirdness spills over: a narcotic, slurred and pilled-up "Stalker", a deformed eyesore slipped in on purpose as if to simulate an aura of ramshackle wickedness that might have delighted the Beck of the time – still a beautiful beggar back then; and the jewel of alienation, foggy-headed and cheaply bought despair that is "Dropout", the album's unexpected poetic peak, with its melancholy cadence, its drugged falsetto, the shabbiness of its threadbare little dress and a poor yet intriguing amateurism, the very same found in F. M. Cornog, among others.

The frenzied grater of "Woman To Woman" is pure adrenaline, the gaudy Cadillac of their videos floating at full speed over listeners still unfamiliar with indie rock in this new decade. It's all just cheek and bluster, one might think, but so cleverly engineered and delivered with such punchable swagger that total surrender is the only possible outcome. The same holds even more so for "Erika Kane", another one of those sturdy, relentless rampages, caught between leftover, mocked-up hard-rock self-indulgence and an all-out, festive chameleon-like quality, delivered with their usual eclectic verve.

The trio comes across as eccentric to the point of parody, yet never inclined toward mere mannerism, and the sense of freedom it manages to convey is a child of the late Sixties, even though the guitars already belong to the Seventies, leonine and cocky ("Nite And Grey"). Virtuosity shows through in every detail, yet it feels weightless, light as a sunbeam or a knowing smile. Take "Bottle Of Fur", another fantastic track, a poisoned apple, candy-coated and covered in dust and debris: the guitars are routinely overexposed, but the formal flourish never overrides the ringing substance of songwriting that borders on perfection, a masterclass in balancing nostalgic exaltation with thoroughly contemporary nonchalance; the fullness of the sound and the loveliness of the chorus are, quite literally, stunning.

True to form, the closer is also a gem, a dazzling kiss-off to the golden promises and discarded junk of the Eighties still winking at the kids from TV screens. The sun of Saturation at dusk reveals the rules of its own fiction. Behind the artifice, the wonder of disenchantment and contemplation flashes into view, before the ghost track (the funky "Operation Kissinger") opens onto the night and a new form of perdition in the depths of a chaotic, hallucinated playground.

A triumphant 1993 closes with an off-the-cuff collaboration between the full band and the Pretenders' singer, Chrissie Hynde, under the moniker Superfan, with a cover of the Carpenters' "Superstar" that ends up on the soundtrack of "Airheads".

Ultimate consecration, as mentioned, would arrive a few months later, once again via the movies, thanks to the foresight of Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman's wicked little set piece. But there's no time to waste, as the boys well know: the present keeps piling on its load of trouble and inspiration alike. Their friend Cobain has exited in the worst possible way, a chapter has clearly closed, but tales of drugs and fragility are also hitting close to home, with the wild card of Blackie Onassis.

Exit The Dragon — a title that parodies Bruce Lee's last film, "Enter The Dragon" — arrives at just the right moment, presenting itself as a gripping parable on the hardships of life on the road, caught between the deceptions of success and a very dark subtext (especially when it comes to addiction) that soaks the usual golden stock of unbeatable bravado in bitterness. With road companions of the caliber of Nirvana, were the excesses and the fallout that followed really avoidable? Anyone expecting a sequel to the previous record, with the same rock formula held up to ridicule and pushed into feverish caricature, will be disappointed: this is a record that bleeds, that fascinates and soothes at once.

Years and years of headlong, filthy romanticism are finally bearing fruit, so much so that a song called "The Mistake" sounds like about the least mistaken thing imaginable. What really hits the mark is the overall fluidity, bordering on miraculous, but above all a production that's finally up to par (once again entrusted to the Butcher Brothers), a wound that had always been left open in the past despite the parade of true console gurus passing through. With the gears well oiled, the volume levels in their rightful place and the charisma never too laid-back, everything spins to perfection. Even Onassis's pyrotechnic drumming betrays an unexpected sense of restraint. Tremendous hooks, melodies by the pound, tearing riffs and close shaves, a vicious and sturdy sound, twangy or fuzzed-out guitars smoothed to velvet, acid lashes and adrenaline-fueled garage-revival circa 1974. All served up together as a special offer, a tasty, dripping little pig in power-pop sauce, bones included.

Urge Overkill pick up the conversation right where it was cut off, staging a bacchanal as hallucinated as it is venomous. They come out swinging under the malevolent sign of Roeser and his streaked yet dry rock, all cramps and sonic nightmares. On the single "The Break" the Rolling Stones echo through again with real force, while the pain of living is laid bare with no more room for the roguish irony of happier days. What's left are the formidable hooks, standing as counterweight to a despair that now has free rein, amid indifference and a general surrender to squalor. This is a monster they exorcise with music that's never been so fierce nor so moving, driven by the urgency of songwriting that chooses to commit itself to clear-eyed autobiography. Nash bursts into "Need Some Air" with his usual playful ferocity, but his cry betrays no less frustration than his bandmate's, lamenting a suffocating, unbearable climate, and he does so with a biting, pounding charisma and a sinister sneer that has shed yesterday's happy-go-lucky pose. Even the clarity of "Somebody Else's Body" shouldn't be taken at face value. In the honest perspective of this confession, in fact, a raw-nerve malaise is never silenced. Urge Overkill are no longer lovable hustlers; they're human beings in distress behind the gleeful masks of rockstars, and with this album they take care to hand us a precious necklace, a string of melancholy, tormented pearls.

The most excruciating dispatches remain those signed by Eddie "The King", proud yet condemned to misery, racked by black moods, saturnine, embittered. That's the case on "Honesty Files" and above all on "This Is No Place", an emblematic track still capable of a painful, beautiful enchantment (as with the best of Alice In Chains), where disorientation takes on a moral dimension and becomes perdition with no way back. Despite this, the guitars never fail to offer long, winding corridors of pure ecstasy. The nerve center and bleeding heart of the record, though, is "The Mistake", written by Onassis as the ideal, superb continuation of the ode to outcasts first sketched in the old "Dropout". Drugs become the elephant in the room of a dark album haunted by ghosts throughout, yet capable too of moving honesty. The self-analysis seems to hide a flicker of hope that the band's own story would soon betray, frustrating the legitimate aspirations of a group with enormous potential.

On the second side the tone turns lighter and more easygoing (just listen to the Cheap Trick-à-la touch of "Take Me"), but without trivializing a script that remains raw and harrowing, and without ever failing to deliver pages of unforgettable fascination (thanks mostly to Kato's guitar). Fitting right into this picture is the return of "View Of The Rain" (from the famous "No Alternative" compilation of two years earlier, where it was titled "Take A Walk"), a ballad that seems luminous on the surface but is disenchanted underneath, gentle as a carousel yet weighed down by lyrics that evoke a sense of claustrophobia, surrender and abandonment.

Beyond the dark mood, the punch remains as formidable as on the previous record: the electric guitars cut just as deep as the lyrics, and in the one moment where tomorrow is hinted at (the second half of "Last Nite/Tomorrow", a brief return to punk-rock exhilaration) a kind of amnesty for the soul, or a way out of the cramped tunnel of this introspection, seems genuinely within reach. While the revivalist romp of "Monopoly" helps lighten the mood and reignites Nash's sumptuous showmanship with brighter colors, the riff of "And You'll Say" comes back herculean and well-honed, as if the boys had rediscovered their footing and full confidence. But it's an illusion, and Roeser does nothing to hide the misfortune of a spirit that finds itself fragile, frightened, flawed, giving way.

True amnesty arrives at the moment of farewell, entrusted (as it could only be) to the elegant charm of a Kato who grows ever more masterful in seduction. Room is made for the mirror-ball tricks that lure in larks looking for a soul caress: goosebumps on the duet of "Digital Black Epilogue", nocturnal and infectious, the kind you let play on and on, ad libitum. The clouds that darkened the moon are now gone from the stage, clear skies returning like a blessing for the dawning day. Too bad that new day will be denied to the band, a promise endlessly postponed by the very same weaknesses that Exit The Dragon managed to tell so well.

Everything Comes Crashing Down

Having freed themselves just in time from the yoke of grunge's last ghosts, Urge Overkill seem to have tomorrow already laid at their feet. Anomalous and brutal as it is, Exit The Dragon is a beautiful record. In no time at all, however, everything collapses, disastrously. Blackie Onassis is arrested for heroin possession and dragged through the media pillory at a time when nobody is being spared on the subject anymore. Perhaps distracted by all the noise around Nirvana, Geffen seems to forget to promote the record. The public, in turn, turns its back on its colorful darlings, and the tour planned for the following months collapses pitifully after just a handful of dates.

The real bolt from the blue, though, comes right on its heels with Roeser's announcement that he's quitting, claiming that nothing works in the band anymore, that it's open warfare and everyone only looks out for themselves. Eddie will try his luck with L.I.M.E., alongside Jim Kimble of the Jesus Lizard, as well as with his brother John in the family joint venture Electric Airlines, but both outfits will dissolve into nothing without leaving a trace. Having replaced their bandmate with guitarist Nils St. Cyr and signed to the more modest 550 Music, a Sony subsidiary, the surviving Kato and Onassis try to put out a new record, but drug dependency issues (now affecting both of them) lead nowhere and get them dropped by the label in 1997. The Urge Overkill adventure is over.

It takes another three years and several stints in rehab before we finally get to hear any new songs from the Chicago musicians. The occasion is the release of the debut solo album by one of them, Nash "Kato" Kaatrud, which is really a kind of fair copy of material sketched out, and promptly scrapped, back in the band's declining years. Debutante comes out on the small Will label in 2000, with substantial contributions from Blackie Onassis and Nils St. Cyr, plus technical oversight from three shrewd Nineties studio veterans: Tori Amos's mentor Eric Rosse, and a couple of heroes from roaring Seattle, Brendan O'Brien and Nick Didia.

Somewhere between steroid-pumped power-pop and adrenaline-fueled bubblegum, this is a debut that mimics the parent band's lively weirdness, but seems to stay cautiously a bit too close to the surface, crowded with additives and sweeteners yet lacking any real dramatic depth. As "Queen Of The Gangsters" suggests, somewhere between echoes of the David Bowie most compromised by easy listening, the real saturation Kaatrud achieves this time around. What we get instead is an irrepressible tendency toward distraction, which ends up proving no less dizzying than the sky-high guitar sound stuffed with effects, reverbs and assorted gurgles.

Over-the-top kitsch, dizzying and stuffed with misleading inserts, the record is nonetheless quite enjoyable: a bubbling cauldron of garish pop-rock clichés, as in the hammering en travesti litany of “Octoroon,” complete with its own saccharine florilegium of backing choirs. Granted, the standard tends toward the flashy and the blaring, with such a tangle of melodies and riffs (“Rani”) that it becomes elusive even for ears well trained in a flood of hooks. Even the measured wonder of closers like “Heaven 90210” or “Digital Black Epilogue” is mostly disowned here, though the licentious decadence of “Blue Wallpaper” still manages to intrigue, and not by a little.

Kato plays it safe with the pose of the velvet-voiced charmer, a colorful seducer through and through, and beyond the hyperglycemic indigestion, you can't deny him a crystalline talent for the art of entertainment, in the manner (always strictly over the top) of an uncredited genius of the same years like Jason Falkner. On “Blow” he risks a digression between intimate wandering and luminous, contemplative ecstasy, a bit like certain passages on the poor-but-beautiful Black Crowes record “Three Snakes And One Charm.” The class is there, and so is the sheer amount thrown at the wall. Unfortunately that amount is too much, too much to digest without a hitch. Only the clearest (and least schizophrenic) cover, of the Steely Dan track “Dirty Work,” seems to keep the difficulty level in check, but unfortunately that can only raise, in turn, the predictability quotient. A flaw that is not found in the nocturnal, wicked little page of “Black Satin Jacket,” with its lovely confidential tone. Beyond everything, it remains a nice listen all the same — elegant and carefree.

The piano and swollen horns of “Los Angelena” push the load up by yet another notch. By this point, there's unmistakably a horror vacui at work in the songwriting that borders on the pathological. Roeser, it's now clear, was the filter in Urge Overkill that's sorely missing here. Nash evidently has a huge amount to say, but his creative outpouring is only properly supported by that sumptuous craftsman's tightrope act, while working against him is his by-now chronic inability to distill his ideas into a coherent, linear, lean statement. The grain of his multiple-exposure snapshots remains extremely noisy and overexposed, but certainly never crude. Good, more than anything, for the soundtrack of a James Bond film that has yet to be made. As in the solo debut of Scott Weiland (“12 Bar Blues,” from two years earlier), an omnivorous bent for the most excessive pop does the rest. The title track and “Born In The Eightees” stand as exemplary mongrel episodes, corrupted by differing codes somewhat like the eccentric explorations of a Jon Spencer. You end up fascinated by the noisy contaminations but, at the same time, also inevitably thrown off balance. Fully absorbing this slippery, eel-like material seems, in short, a rather arduous undertaking. And if Kato proves to be the adorable charlatan he's always been, unfortunately for him the album is nonetheless destined for failure.

Almost another five years pass in complete silence. Then, suddenly, something stirs. Worn down by nostalgia, inactivity and the shadow of their respective failures, Eddie and Nash realize it's long past time to bury the hatchet. The thaw proceeds slowly but steadily, without any forcing, and in 2004 the reunion becomes official with a series of shows under the historic name that the two play for a crowd of aficionados, touring around the States. The new lineup includes Mike “Hadji” Hodgkiss of the Gaza Strippers on bass and Nate Arling behind the snare, soon replaced by Brian “Bonn” Quast of Polvo and Cherry Valence. Not part of it, unfortunately, is Blackie Onassis, ruled out of the project from the start due to the unreliability stemming from his never-resolved substance abuse problems.

In May 2011, Urge Overkill resurface with a collection of unreleased tracks from the black hole into which they seemed to have crashed — a full sixteen years of abyss, during which Comet Hale-Bopp has had time to pay us a visit and has already set a date for its next rendez-vous. We won't be around for that one. Neither will the Chicago band, and maybe that's not even a bad thing. It's just as predictable that, even two thousand-something years from now, Kato and Roeser still won't have strayed from the steroid-and-Viagra-fuelled rock (“Little Vice”) of this Rock'n'roll Submarine, a record that is, in the end, honest and even touching in its self-preserving instinct.

This time the margin of error is infinitesimal: the acid jolts that greet the listener sit within a framework of absolute discipline and regularity, with a renewed ambition toward arena-rock that at this point seems hopelessly past its sell-by date. Wiped out by the long hiatus, the evolutionary promise of the band that sang “Sister Havana” and “Positive Bleeding” stalled right at the threshold of the previous, sadly underappreciated, chapter of their career. For this troubled comeback, by now completely unable to look forward with any kind of gain, these eternal long-hairs choose to mask their flabby but heartfelt idea of rock under layer upon layer of greasepaint. The result is a positively reactionary album, dignified in its own way, the only one they could have written without risking looking ridiculous. A choice that leads unmistakably back to a record like Americruiser — the same one that (right alongside the first sparks of Seattle) still reeked terribly of the Eighties — and which is now preferred over the far more comfortable, near-mainstream recycling bin of Saturation.

Brave enough to give up the flattery of high fidelity, set aside to make room for fairly spartan recordings in which the guitars tower over everything. Stoic enough to dive back into a sound that was already left behind by everyone and everything right at the starting line, ahead of its time only for any unlikely posthumous rediscovery. The submarine radars of “Mason/Dixon” conjure a submerged world, a musical era fallen (more or less deservedly) into oblivion, which Urge Overkill aim to exhume, with only the affection of a few die-hard fans for company. With rediscovered polish and plenty of meat on passages (“She's My Ride,” the effervescent “The Valiant,” “End Of Story,” the pleasing returning power-pop of “Thought Balloon”) where the dusty charms win out; wheezing and stale with the air of a wooden revival whenever fatigue gets the upper hand instead.

The commitment is undeniable, but the effort from Roeser and Kato feels as genuine as it is unambitious. The predictability behind that correctness of songwriting — dropping huge riffs, solos, choruses and refrains exactly where you'd expect to find them — plays like a sentence. What's missing is the swerve, the eccentric digression, the sudden impulse. What's missing are surprises, or even a shred of genuine emotion. So it doesn't take long to realize that those pleasantly familiar sounds won't be enough, on their own, to save the record from the ordinary grayness of reheated leftovers, and the resulting shower of yawns (“Quiet Person”).

To those asking whether the time had finally come to gift the world a new record, Urge Overkill finally answer with Oui in 2022. The menacing bull on the cover reminds us that the swaggering rockers of Saturation have no intention of being tamed by the passing of time. Although perhaps they could have made that point better by choosing a punchier opener than “Freedom.” The famous 80s hit probably holds special meaning for the band, but even masters like them at reworking other people's songs add nothing new to the George Michael original. Better to move on to the following “A Necessary Evil,” which really wouldn't have looked out of place on one of their albums from the last century. Sure, they're working within familiar structures and patterns, and you can feel the absence of Blackie Onassis on drums, yet King Roeser's voice is still warm and the guitar flourishes are just tasty enough. But the road they've taken remains full of obstacles: all it takes is a dip in inspiration, a less catchy melody, a guitar riff placed exactly where you'd expect it, and the mask slips off. A good half of the record, especially the second half, thus slides by with few ideas, with hooks and guitar flare-ups that feel precooked and barely thawed.

Fans nostalgic for their power-pop ballads will find satisfaction in “I Been Ready” and “Totem Pole,” which features a sound strongly reminiscent of late-90s Soul Asylum. More spirited is “Litany,” with a crescendo structure driven toward rock territory by the drums' and guitar's sudden bursts of energy. There's no shortage of eccentric lyrics either, another Urge Overkill trademark. On “Prisoner's Dilemma” they take a stab, in their own way, at discussing Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, delivering a few words of Italian that are anything but flawless. On “Forgiven,” meanwhile, they warn us that they don't want to hear opinions and simply want to be alive. That's probably the approach they've also chosen to take in the world of music: Oui is an album made by professionals who simply enjoy playing and feeling alive. It doesn't stray far from its predecessor — after all, many of the songs were recorded decades ago. All in all, you get the sense that the American band has scraped the bottom of the barrel looking for something appetizing to offer the listener, and that with experience they've managed to plate something up. But nothing more.

Still skilled at prolonging the illusion that time stopped in 1995, these guys also prove unable to shake off the heavy shadow of such an anachronism. Looking on the bright side, you could always say that the comeback itself is already a fine achievement, all the more so given the encouraging live performances. That too is quite an undertaking, to be fair, though even if they win one battle (Pyrrhus-style), they can only lose the war. However skilled they are at running, the ghost of Uma Thurman dancing in the bedroom will always be with them.

Contributions by Fabio Ferrara (“Oui”)

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google