•
Rating: “Psychic Powerless” is one of the most extravagant rock albums of the '80s.
The Butthole Surfers are a Texan band that is very difficult to categorize, due to their indefinable mix of hardcore, psychedelia, industrial, and roots-rock. The only common denominator of their style is the madcap, parodistic, and surreal aspect, which brings them closer to the great (and sometimes unrecognized) eccentrics of rock, like Red Crayola, Holy Modal Rounders, Pere Ubu, and others.
Perhaps the flaw of this album (their first LP, dated 1985) is the inability to synthesize: there is the impression that all this boisterous creativity, this deviant attitude towards tearing apart the semantics of traditional rock genres, this aesthetics of the ugly, the excessive, and the delirious, remains somewhat self-contained, unlike, for example, that of Pere Ubu, who used a grotesque reinvention of garage-rock to express the unease of the post-industrial era. The proposal of the Surfers, on the other hand, remains a game: creative yes, provocative certainly, but still a game.
The album opens with two catastrophic sound avalanches, “Concubine” and “Eye of the Chicken”: the former is a perverse ride with the implacable advance of a steamroller, disturbed by Leary's screeching guitar and Haynes' beastly moans, filtered through a megaphone; the latter remembers the lesson of Chrome, thus setting up an obsessive frontal assault based on screeching electronics. In “Dum Dum” the rhythm section takes the lead, with Kramer's piercing bass and Teresa Taylor's tribal drums as protagonists of dizzying and paroxysmal accelerations. “Woly Boly” instead reflects the influence of the Cramps and their macabre and demonic rhythm’n’blues. “Negro Observer” is perhaps the most accessible and soft track: a guitar arpeggio, a skeletal and madcap sax, Haynes' sarcastic singing (a paranoid and tragicomic version of Johnny Rotten's monotone outburst) converge at the end in a stunning yet soft psychedelic magma.
The album now gets into the thick of it, with its strong pieces. The title-track is a supersonic hardcore, touching pure madness in the sudden stop’n’go of the final part; besides the boisterous streak (the continuous chatter in the background during the chorus, instead of the usual backup vocals), what distinguishes this track from the canonical hardcore of the Californian school is the absence of a solid and aggressive sound: Leary's guitar is much closer to the chaotic and frayed noise-making of a Mayo Thompson rather than the ferocity and compactness of a Gregg Gin. “Lady Sniff”, with its out-of-tune riff, confirms it: the track, a parody of southern rock with Haynes seemingly mimicking Lemmy, relies on a fascinating sonic ensemble of belches, raspberries, and other “concrete” sounds that, used as a counterpoint to the riff, constitute the true stylistic mark of a song among the most outrageous in rock history. “Cherub” is perhaps the masterpiece of the album: 6 minutes of Barrett-like reverberations and sudden upsurges, supported by a hypnotic rhythm and pierced by electronic disturbances and tormented vocal spasms; with this track, the Surfers steer the acid psychedelia of the sixties into the industrial era. In the latter part of the album, the dizzying surf/tex-mex of “Mexican Caravan” follows, with Leary's piercing blows, the chaotic funk-rock of “Cowboy Bop”, where the sax and megaphone reappear, with another guitar bacchanal, and the rowdy blues of “Gary Floyd”, reminiscent of Captain Beefheart's lesson, master of broken times and the most grotesque and savage avant-rock.
Comparisons with Beefheart, Red Crayola, or Pere Ubu are perhaps inappropriate: but “Psychic Powerless” remains a mine of ideas and a hymn to eccentricity and irreverence.
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
03 Dum Dum (03:47)
You want the people to be the people that want the people that love you
You need the people to show the facts instead again they shot you
Want the people to be the people they don't need you
Need the people to show the people they displease you
Lover man his face is lost and you're much smaller
Then again the other man he's much smaller
You want the people to be the people that want the people that love you
You need the people to show the facts instead again they shot you
Want the people to see the people they don't need you
Need the people that need the people they don't need you
Then again the son of a bitch and he's much smaller
Then again and then again and then again and then again
You want the people to be the people that want the people that love you
You need the people to show the facts instead again they shot you
Want the people to be the people they don't need you
Need the people to show the people they displease you
Lover man his face is lost and you're much smaller
Then again the other man he's much smaller
05 Negro Observer (03:40)
Well, I don't know what..
Well, I don't know who..
Well, I don't know where or when..
Well, I don't know it..
Well, I don't know they..
Well, I don't know thick or thin..
Landing in empty parking lots
in deserted discount stores,
Negro observers are landing by the scores!
Dropping down in low-rider cars
from Pluto, Venus, and Mars..
Negro Observers are counting heads in singles bars!
ah hah hah ha hah
Walking up and down the empty boulevards...
Negro Observers with muscles that are very hard!
Walking up and down and falling everywhere,
Negro Observers flying through the air.
They don't know what goes on,
but the Negro Observers are big and strong.
hoo ha ha ha hah
06 Butthole Surfer (03:02)
I was walkin' down around Venice way
Los Angeles
Oh big California
A man came up to me
About 40, gay
I say
"Go away...OK...No way...AGGGHHHHHHHGH"
BUTTHOLE SURF!! etc.
I was ridin' wave
around Malibu beach
A guy came up to me
He was lookin' like a leech
He said "Hey, Sonny boy, can I eat you peach?"
I say "Motherfucker...ifyoureach..
I don't know what I'm goin' to do"
BUTTHOLE SURF!! etc.
I was ridin' my cruiser in West Hollywood
A girl came up to me and she was lookin' mighty good...
I was eating quaaludes like butthole surfers should
She left me there where I stood
BUTTHOLE SURF!! etc.
HEY BUTT
WHAT THE FUCK
WE ALL LIKE YOU
'CAUSE YOU'RE A SLUT
07 Lady Sniff (03:45)
(These lyrics are not entirely correct, because on can hear the word "teabag" in the song).
Yeah, boy. Heh Heh Heh.
Let it walk and let it talk and stick it on the wall.
Lately when I say to you baby, don't know what I know.
Let it walk and let it talk and rooty tooty doo
Lately when I see you baby, don't know what I do.
When I say no, yeah, I mean no.
Take me back to Detroit, piehole!
Let it walk and let it talk and what the hell you say?
Lately when I see you baby, each and every day.
Let it walk and let it talk and rooty tooty doo.
Lately when I see you baby, don't know what I do.
When I say no, yeah, I mean no.
Pass me some of that dumbass over there, yeah boy.
Let it walk and put it down and walk it on the wall.
Lately when I see you baby, don't know what I know.
Let it walk and let it talk and what the hell you say?
Lately when I see you baby, each and every day.
When I say no, yeah, I mean no.
Bernie, Bring me my bacon! Bernie?
08 Cherub (06:23)
Cherub
Cherub the angel
Roll back the hands of time
Cherub
Enter the angel
aaaaaaahhhh!
You walk alone now
You're never mind
The walks you've taken
have left behind
All people sideways
They look at you
may god forsake me
cause I do to
I see bodies
Maybe, maybe someone is alive
Naked we smile
Hoo-hahahahahahahah, a-hahahahahohoho
Naked
Ha-ha
ahhhh
You're right beside me
you gaze a view
your body's vacant
they crawl right through
those bodies falling
it's in the air
we're mixed so close now
but I don't care
ha ha ha
walk upon me
your body lead
you try to escape you
it's in your head
I'd better go back
I'm not over there
You walk beside me
you gaze at me
you're homeless now
or that times three
amazon
you gaze along
I'll make you talk you
there is no bong
your mind has cut you
you're bleeding now
your plans escaped
just like a bow
they walk right past you
they stop and stare
your body's lying
all over there
ha-he-he-he-he
feh
09 Mexican Caravan (02:45)
Take me
Mexican Caravan
South of
South of the Rio Grande
Take me to that amigo town
Where I can score some of that heroin brown
Take me
Mexican Caravan
South of
South of anywhere you can
Push me in through the garbage can
Teach this white boy to be Mexican
Take me
Mexican Caravan
Let's score some of that heroin
You know the way to make the white boy say
Make me Mexican
Take me
Mexican Caravan
Push me into the Rio Grande
You know the way to make the white boy say
Make me Mexican
Take me
Take me
Take me
Take me Mexican Caravan!
10 Cowboy Bob (02:55)
I woke up this morning
On the wrong side of bed
I had a knife in my back
And I put it back in
Oh my God I was dead
I hope I get to sleep tonight
I never can
I've always got a knife in my back
No matter where, no matter when
11 Gary Floyd (01:53)
I could have a real good time if I had a gun
I know, well I know. The things I do and say
And if I did not have no gun well I know, I know
I've got a knife.
Well, Gary Floyd and all his pals are gonna' come on down
To the roundaround. They're gonna' shoot all day.
Saw the nature in the swimming pool
In a two-piece oh and I lost my cool
Well I'm cool-the things I do and say
The color brown is coming down
I feel my head go round and round and round (etc.)
Well, Gary Floyd and all his pals are gonna' come on down
To the roundaround. They're gonna' shoot all day.
Loading comments slowly
Other reviews
By Sanjuro
"Psychic Powerless the highest peak of the Butthole Surfers... avant-garde redneck with vitriol."
"They fuck your mother, your father, your sister, and then when you think they’re fucking your grandmother, they talk to her cordially and make yarn together, rocking pleasantly on the chair."
