Mudhoney

The great tradition of Seattle's garage rock perhaps reached its peak with the Mudhoney, its foremost purveyors in the grunge era (the 1990s).

The band was formed on New Year’s Day 1988 by Mark Arm and Steve Turner of the Green River and Matt Lukin of the Melvins, with Dan Peters on drums.

The group debuted with two legendary singles, Touch Me I'm Sick / Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More (1988) and You Got It / Burn It Clean, which forged a fiery sound relying primarily on visceral vibrations and hypnotic repetition of a few simple musical phrases. You Got It, in particular, with an excellent Steve Turner solo, sounds like a cross between Grateful Dead, Free, the Stooges, and Hendrix. And Touch Me I'm Sick can still be considered the epitome of their sound.

The EP Superfuzz Bigmuff (SubPop, 1988) consecrated those principles borrowed from garage bands like Blue Cheer with wild excursions such as No One Has and especially In 'N' Out Of Grace, destined to remain one of their masterpieces. That the Mudhoney had the credentials to act as charismatic leaders is demonstrated above all by the explosive ballad If I Think and the more epic track: Need.

The album Mudhoney (SubPop, 1989) is a showcase of garage-rock clichés (feedback, reverb, “sick” melodies) transplanted onto the body of hardcore (thrash cadences, epileptic pacing). The result is a much more spasmodic nervous tension: Arm screams the chorus of This Gift like a madman, similar to No Fun (Stooges), accompanied by avalanche-like rhythmic fractures and maniacal guitar distortions; he whispers the psychotic lament of Here Comes Sickness in a flood of guitar distortion, creating suspense for an apocalyptic crescendo; he thrashes in a syncopated racket bordering on the roughest rhythm and blues in Get Into Yours (one of their masterpieces). Mudhoney’s music is still glorious, triumphing even in the most frenzied episodes, and thus less “grunge,” like Flat Out Fucked (with a blazing guitar solo), or in slower moments, like the blues-psychedelic languor of Come To Mind. The catchiest track is perhaps Running Loaded, a rough, jagged ballad marked by furious riffs and a chorus full of despair. Turner’s thunderous, brutal chords (perhaps the greatest heir to Ron Asheton) serve the Mudhoney in the same way Page’s pyrotechnic, aristocratic chords served Led Zeppelin.

Between 1990 and 1991, several singles were released (You're Gone, Hate The Police, She's Just Fifteen) that cemented their legend.

Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge (SubPop, 1991) brings order to the chaos with a more refined and controlled sound, original arrangements, and professional production. An almost symphonic overture (Generation Genocide, with a raga-psychedelic organ phrase in the style of Pink Floyd) and the almost baroque melody of Let It Slide are the first results. The band’s framework still relies on visceral riffs, metallic jabs, Turner’s incendiary distortions, Arm’s sarcastic choruses, Lukin’s propulsive rumble, and Peters’ tribal cadences. Good Enough, Into The Drink, Who You Drivin’ Now continue to recycle the atmospheres of beat, surf, and bubblegum with a punk attitude.
It is therefore not surprising to hear Chuck Berry-style guitar licks in Thorn and a blues harmonica in Pokin’ Around, albeit always stripped down and blasted to maximum decibels and heart-pounding intensity. While inspired by the Sixties, the Mudhoney remain protagonists of granite walls of violence à la MC5 (Shoot The Moon), post-psychedelic feedback masses (Check-out Time), and instrumental sarabandes in the style of the Stooges (Fuzzgun '91). But, having lost the powerful attack of their beginnings and the abrasive charm of their first album, over the course of Every Good Boy the Mudhoney seem to be searching for a different style, trying to be someone else, and some songs end up sounding completely bland.

In the long run, however, the band’s limitations came to the surface. Piece Of Cake (Reprise, 1992) continued their progression toward a more professional sound, but it also ends up resembling many other bands that drew from the same sources. No End In Sight could almost be an AC/DC-style rock and roll track, the chorus and frenzy of Living Wreck evoke nostalgia for the Heartbreakers, and the nasty riff of I'm Spun could have been invented by any follower of ’70s hard rock. Snarling songs like Suck You Dry still emerge from the turbulent garage of the ’60s, but there’s a limit to how many times the same formula can be listened to. Blinding Sun perhaps boasts the most original harmony, with its almost country shuffle and a Tom Petty–like lament that suddenly bursts into an epic phrase. But in general, the Mudhoney tiredly repeat a musical language that was never particularly brilliant, and they do so with decreasing conviction.

Steve Turner and Mark Arm also allow themselves a luxurious break, recording as Monkeywrench a blues album in their own style, Clean As A Broke-Dick Dog (SubPop, 1992), with Tom Price (Gas Huffer), Tim Kerr (Big Boys), and Martin Bland (Lubricated Goat). The work confirms more than anything that the Mudhoney had exhausted their creative energies.

Even more garage-rock–oriented is the EP Five Dollar Bob's Mock Cooter Stew (Reprise), particularly In The Blood and Six Two One.

Turner is also the driving force behind a more conventional garage-rock with the Sad And Lonelys (an album for Super Electro, 1992) and with the Fall-Outs. Both the singles Don't Want The Sun and This Is Mine, as well as the Fall-Outs’ albums—first Fall Outs (Super Electro, 1992) and then Here I Come And Other Hits (Estrus, 1993)—rely on that simple aesthetic, seemingly unaware of everything that had happened in rock in the following quarter century. Sleep (Super Electro, 1994) mainly features simple, upbeat choruses like Sleep and Something's Wrong, while the rhythmic, snappy Seen The Light and All My Words recall ’60s party vibes. The singer Dave Holmes wrote nearly all the compositions.

Mark Arm, meanwhile, helped the band Bloodloss.

My Brother The Cow (Reprise, 1995) marks a further regression for the Mudhoney, who finally reach back to the rhythm and blues of the 1950s. While it’s true that traces of uncontrolled violence, hardcore (Fearless Doctor Killers), and MC5 (Execution Style) occasionally surface, the middle-aged Mudhoney are those of Into Her Shtik, plagiarizing Aerosmith’s Draw The Line and the J. Geils Band’s Looking For A Love, or those of What Moves A Heart, borrowing the craft of the Stray Cats, or those of Generation Spokesmodel, who seem to parody themselves.

Competing with Surgery for the crown of epidermal shock with Judgement Rage Retribution And Thyme and sealing their vision of a powerpop overflowing with grit and passion with Today Is A Good Day, the Mudhoney find a second youth. In My Finest Suit is one of the few power ballads that truly gives you goosebumps, thanks to the martial guitar strikes and the crescendoing riff that underlines the chorus “I got you/ I got a lot to lose.”

The hypnotic psychedelic raga of 1995 manages to merge the King Crimson of 20th Century Man, the Hendrix of I Don't Live Today, and, naturally, the Stooges of 1969, as well as a chaotic Albert Ayler–style finale with saxophone, into an anthem that might well remain their masterpiece.

Following the single Night of The Hunted (Super Electro, 1998), the album Tomorrow Hit Today (Reprise, 1998) is a transitional work that rarely (A Thousand Forms Of Mind, Oblivion) clicks.

Following bassist Matt Lukin's untimely retirement, and drummer Dan Peters' numerous collaborations, Mudhoney went into hybernation. March To Fuzz (Subpop, 1999), a 52-song double album compilation, is a testament of the brutal, wild, animal roots of this band that, alas, fell victim to grunge grandeur. They were accidentally related to the pimpish Soundgarden and Nirvana sound. Their genes were the ones of MC5 and Blue Cheer. The Mudhoney crew was coming from the same mental asylum that begat Killdozer and Laughing Hyenas: massive doses of rock and roll, savage guitar romps, groaning bass and tribal drums. Their songs exude a vitality that was missing from most of the Seattle movement. The compilation includes rarities such as Run Shithead Run.

Steve Turner and Mark Arm resumed the moniker Monkeywrench for Electric Children (Sweet Nothing, 2000), a follow-up, eight years later, to their Clean As A Broke-Dick Dog. The line-up is identical, with Tom Price (Gas Huffer) and Tim Kerr (Big Boys) sharing guitar duties and Martin Bland (Lubricated Goat) pounding on drums. While it all sounds a little dated, the band's hard rock is an adult version of Mudhoney's garage-rock (In The City Tonight, From Now On, Around Again, Bring On The Judgement Day). But the dark, ominous, Doors-ian Weasels In The Barn and the grisly blues of Cherry Red build metaphysical atmospheres. And the nine-minute psychedelic jam In The Days Of The Five has the fury and the fuzz that the shorter tracks lack.

With matt Lukin replaced by former Lubricated Goat Guy Maddison, Mudhoney's Since We've Become Translucent (Subpop, 2002) is a mixed bag, running the gamut from the 1000th imitation of the Stooges' 1969 (The Straight Life, originally recorded in 2000) to the horns-driven rhythm and blues of Where The Flavor Is, to the "MC5-meets-Bo-Diddley" garage stomp of Our Time is Now, to the rowdy rave-up of Inside Job (another remnant of the 2000 sessions), to the voodoobilly cum horn section a` la Fleshtones of Take it Like a Man. Each of them is a convincing reminder of Mudhoney's formidable sound machine, but hardly a musical revolution. The band did mean to venture beyond their usual turf, though. The album's opener is actually an eight-minute free-form acid jam, Baby Can You Dig The Light, adorned with a Colosseum-style romantic-saxophone and distorted-guitar work-out (which, unfortunately, turns into a lame ballad towards the end) and the closer is a seven-minute space-boogie meditation a` la Hawkwind, Sonic Infusion. Both sound irresolute and insecure, a sign that it won't be easy for Mudhoney to abandon their roots.

Steve Turner's first solo album, Searching For Melody (Roslyn, 2003), an effort in the vein of singer-songwriters of the 1970s. And His Bad Ideas (Roslyn, 2005), instead, steals the sound from the most electric Neil Young and from the Rolling Stones. New Wave Punk Asshole (Funhouse, 2007), also credited to the Bad Ideas, is equally bluesy if less energetic, making it sound more like a ubiquitous garage-rock band of the 1960s.

Mudhoney added political concerns to their blend of power-pop and rhythm'n'blues on Under A Billion Suns (Sub Pop, 2006). The last thing one would like to do is listen to the lyrics of Mudhoney, but there is little else to do while listening to their predictable melodies and riffs. Only Endless Yesterday (with xylophone) and Hard-On for War cause a minor excitement.

The Lucky Ones (2008) might win a prize for sincerity and passion, but not for inspiration (The Lucky Ones, Tales of Terror, I'm Now).

Steve Turner and Mark Arm resurrected Monkeywrench for a third album, Gabriel's Horn (Birdman, 2000), again released eight years after the previous one, and again devoted to routine blues-rock jams.

Head On The Curb (Sutro Park, 2011) collects rarities.