Special Features: Limited to 1500. 180 gram red vinyl. Gold foil number stamp.
Tracklisting:
- Untitled
- No End in Sight
- Make It Now
- When in Rome
- Untitled
- Suck You Dry
- Blinding Sun
- Thirteenth Floor Opening
- Youth Body Expression Explosion
- I'm Spun
- Take Me There
- Living Wreck
- Let Me Let You Down
- Untitled
- Ritzville
- Acetone
They were supposed to be the stars of Seattle - the great honky hope for bringing the underground over ground. But then those damn Nirvanas came along and ruined everything!!!! No big deal; Mudhoney never would have been able to win the hearts of mainstream youth the way Qirdt Kobane's angst-ridden lyrics did way back in late '91. See, the prob with the 'honey isn't that they are incapable of writing great songs; in fact, very few things could be further from the truth!!! The prob, bob, is that the 'honey are the '90s equivalent of reliable mid-'60s garage punk bands like The Seeds, The Standells, and The Count Five; you can count on 'em to come up with some catchy guitar riffs and infectious choruses, but not much else. They're extremely predictable, displaying a stylistic range of perhaps three different types of music (happy poppy riffage, darker driving ROCK AND ROLL!!!!, and slow "bluesy" dirges), and, no matter how much they try to sound like wildass guitar heroes in the Blue Cheer vein, the lead guitarwork is at best a soulless imitation of late-'60s hard rock. All complaints aside, though, Mudhoney have proven themselves to be fantastic providers of catchy fun guitar-heavy rock and roll for close to a decade now. They might only be on par with The Seeds, but since when is that a bad thing???
Have you ever even heard "Pushin' Too Hard?"
Had you asked me my opinion of this record the year it came out, I probably would have given it a three and flipped you a bird for bringing it up in my presence. I tell ye, I HATED IT!!!! It was just a bunch of stupid jokes!! Fart noises, fake techno, stupid bluesy riffs with cutesy titles like "Let Me Let You Down" and "Youth Body Expression Explosion." Bleah!!!! But now, of course, the years have passed, I've learned to relax a bit more, and I can wipe my tears to the side and recognize that, between all the silly foolin' around horsetongue lie quite a few terrific little Mudhoney songs. In fact, I'd happily give the time of day or a bite of my crime to "Make It Now," "Blinding Sun," "Suck You Dry," or "I'm Spun." So that's something.
Unfortunately, the album as a whole suffers from the inclusion of too much silliness backed up by hackneyed chord sequences. Who pays twelve bucks to hear jokes??? I mean, besides the billions and billions of justifiably devoted "Weird Al" Yankovic fanatics? If you listen to it in a good or pot-smokin' mood, you'll get a good feel from it and have a swell afternoon. If you wanna hear real music, though, look the frig elsewhere. - Mark Prindle
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Reader Comments
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burk4351@tao.sosc.osshe.edu
For the longest time, Mudhoney said they would never sign to a major label. When they finally realized how corporate the owners of Sub Pop were, they decided to do with the lowest bidder which was Reprise (DGC offered half a mil and was rejected so David Geffen is a tad bitter - poor rich bastard). I felt that the jokes and stuff were the band saying, "Look - we're fucking around with a major label's money and they don't give a shit," but that's just me.