Twenty years ago a little independent record label based in Seattle released an EP by a band called Mudhoney. Named Superfuzz Bigmuff after two of the band’s favoured distortion stomp-boxes, it was one of the foundation stones of the scene that would become the worldwide phenomenon of grunge.
Ironically enough, it hardly sold at all, even by Sub Pop’s standards at the time. I’d love to be able to claim I heard it when it came out, but I was only eleven at the time; like many others, my first encounter with Superfuzz Bigmuff was a few years later on a woolly third- or fourth-generation cassette copy. You didn’t need high fidelity sound to hear that Mudhoney had a great knack for the frantic scuzzy pop song.
But it’s a post-modern world we live in, and nothing worthwhile survives long without being reissued and recreated for the digital eternity of modern media … plus Sub Pop and Mudhoney have bills to pay. So here’s the Deluxe Edition of Superfuzz Bigmuff to celebrate two decades of raucous clatter by a band who - unlike many of their contemporaries - never stopped performing.
And when they say Deluxe Edition, they’re not messing around - this isn’t some feeble DVD extras type of thing. The original Superfuzz Bigmuff EP was six tracks long; just the first disc of this two disc set has almost three times as many tunes, the result of bolting on the contents of a couple of early singles and three demo versions that chronicle the genesis of Mudhoney’s sound.
It almost sounds weird to hear these tunes mastered so cleanly, and to catch little details that were obscured on my cloned recordings. The guitars are thick with saturated distortion from the eponymous pedals; the drums rumble and thump their way around the rhythms with more than a little slack, but never enough to derail the tune; Mark Arm shrieks, wails and exhorts his way through the lyrics, sounding simultaneously passionate and nonchalent at the same time. There’s genuine pop snap buried beneath Superfuzz Bigmuff’s layers of grunge, along with a decent quota of hipster cool.
While the no-wave nihilism and what-the-hell of Mudhoney’s music sounds familiar now, it must have been quite shocking when considered in context with its era of release. Their “plug in and go” approach must have seemed all the more radical against the backdrop of hair metal’s bloated excesses and dumb theatrics; Superfuzz Bigmuff was the sound of a band making a big noise for its own sake, reviving the garage-rock aesthetics of the sixties with the DIY defibrillator of punk rock. It sounded like good times then, and still does today – the sound of getting wasted, cranking your amps and ignoring the neighbours.
Simple as the music may be, Mudhoney’s ace in the hole was – and still is – an instinctive grasp of catchy songs and memorable hooks. There’s a reason why everyone remembers the lyrics for “Touch Me I’m Sick” - it’s because they’re so perfect for the job that you can’t help but grin your way through them, all the while wishing you’d thought of them first.
There’s a reason that dozens of stoner and grunge bands attempted to clone “Mudride” and “Sweet Young Thing” - it’s because they capture the wasted elegance of the slacker lifestyle with melodies you can’t help but try to hum. The whole of the Deluxe Edition of Superfuzz Bigmuff is packed with exuberant velocity - all the energy of punk without the simplistic politics or self-righteous scenester posturing.
The second disc provides a bunch of live material from two shows, the first in Berlin (which features Arm and the band merrily trying to bridge the language barrier with an initially unresponsive audience - “pull down your pants if you like us … hey, no one likes us!”), and the second shorter set performed for a US radio station. Both sets show Mudhoney as a band who achieved that rare nirvana of sounding the same on record as when on stage; slightly ragged, but full of energy and carefree fun, running at the limits of their equipment and playing like it’s the last show on earth.
If you’ve been a fan of Mudhoney for years, the reissued Superfuzz Bigmuff will add material to your collection you’ll be glad to have paid for. If you’ve never heard of them before, then it’s high time you found out what you’ve been missing - and this is your ideal opportunity.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: Deluxe Edition, garage, grunge, Mudhoney, punk, rock'n'roll, Superfuzz Bigmuff
