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 The guys that gurned and gave birth to grunge are back with familiar, even
after been outta the Mud-loop for a few years, sludgy riffs like falling
through a manhole straight into a city's sewage supply, swept along on
sea-snake guitar lines, endless sustain eddying you into an Amazonian
whirlpool. They should donate these riffs to science to look for exotic,
long lost sub-species of scaly insectoids at the end of each recording
session...from the off it's welcomely skewed and sluiced with Sabbath
acidblues trouser bulges taking the bag off the head of a groupie to
discover a three-headed horn section from a riverboat band hired from a
wheeler-dealing dude from Monster Magnet in a parallel universe
Mississippi on Mars. The message however is straight back down to earth
with the force of that ride atop the Stratosphere in Vegas - 'Where is the
future that was promised us...?'. Disconnected and disconcerting as
Mudhoney ever were
but being the Seattle scene survivors there's a sense of what the
fuck?!...Seems they've smelt their newly clean shorts and the stench of
the rest of the world hit 'em hard and sent 'em hurtling into the
space-rock jams of their mind but whereas a Billy Bragg or Steve Earle
are more direct the Mud-men shroud their prophecies in pith and swathe
their sarcasm in swampy sleaze tunes (the brilliantly noxious New York
Dolls-y 'It Is Us' and it's inspired sardonic tag of 'Happy days are here
again') but for the centrepiece they embody the feel of Iggy in 'Raw
Power' days, taking a hit knowing before he does so he's heading for an
overdose ('Endless Yesterday') from then on in unfortunately heading head
first into the abyss of their own arses, eking out either spindly Stooge
stoners like 'Let's Drop In' or adding to the timeless tedium of 'Kick Out
The Jams' style riffs on 'A Brief
Celebration Of Indifference', which may have a nice title but doesn't stop
it being trite.
A bit disappointing overall, especially as it started out great. If they
halved the set there'd be the makings of a semi-classic EP. Sure, not an
era-defining one as with 'SuperFuzzBigMuff', that's an accident of
history, but as they are commenting on a
rather different accident of history at present and all should be allowed
in the debate, moreso from a less run of the mill mind, such as the
collective one, conscious or otherwise, of Mudhoney.
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