Green River
Rehab Doll

The term grunge initially stands for: dirt, repellent person, and therefore filthy and foul-smelling. Tying the term grunge exclusively to that musical scene that spread with the explosion of the multi-platinum "Nevermind" (1991) generated by Nirvana (...and Butch Vig), - after which even similar and respectable groups like Pearl Jam (the maturation of the primordial Seattle sound) and Soundgarden (the meeting point between Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath), - is not entirely correct, considering that in the early '80s Australia gave birth to bands like Lubricated Goat, Exploding White Mice or even Cosmic Psychos, earning Adelaide the rather fitting designation of Grunge City.

It's a necessary prologue before talking about Green River, the group that counted among its ranks Mark Arm (later in Mudhoney), Alex Vincent, Bruce Fairweather (who replaced Steve Turner), and the core of the future Mother Love Bone (and later Pearl Jam), Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament. The sound of Green River manages to blend the spontaneity of punk and the freshness of metal, and this is enough to create a circle of faithful fans present at concerts, ready to grab every vinyl release, in a period and context where tape trading ensures the knowledge and spread of musical underground.

While in 1984 the mini "Come On Down" (piercing sounds and obsessive riffs) represents the debut via Homestead Records, three years later it is Sub Pop that takes care of releasing the raging "Dry As A Bone", a true concentrate of youthful ardor and frustrations, reaching its peak expression in the primordial blues of "Unwind" skillfully winking also at the Stooges. Once again, it's the mother label from Seattle that handles the distribution of the band's first real album: "Rehab Doll", which opens with the sonic aggression of "Forever Means", a direct heir of the zeppellin-inspired sound that meets the sludgiest Black Sabbath, while the indomitable title track proves to be morbid and obsessive in the riff and as in the pounding rhythm. The raucous vocals of Arm proudly rise in the nihilistic swing of "Take A Dive", allowing the avid ears of listeners to enjoy the percussive compactness of Vincent and blending seamlessly with the other instruments. Honestly, no natural evolution seems to be felt from the early days, although from a global perspective "RD" has no difficulty appearing as an honest work certainly not lacking in novelty. The inescapable sonic repetitiveness and the expression of a generational malaise, first become the soul of a sound that has taken over what was spread almost twenty years earlier with "Kick Out The Jams" by the MC5, leaving the bold lyrical approach to complete the picture. It is precisely along these lines that the wrath of "Porkfist" develops and wonderfully connects to the energetic and enjoyable 70s hard rock of "Smiling And Dyin'", while the reissue of "Swallow My Pride" (already in the first E.p.) becomes a fair expression of urban rage. And if the immediacy of the initial riff of "Together We'll Never" and its slapped bass won't inspire awe, it will be the primitiveness of "One More Stitch" starting with a muffled and biting acoustic guitar accompanying the laments of the Seattle vocalist, then leading to an evocative ensemble anger that carries us to the end of an ostensibly raw long-playing. A 33 RPM record which, for many, will be a necessary starting point, before one of the many less prominent American metropolises became, for several years, an alternative musical reference point.

Listening to the record, what definitely stands out is the liveliness of the proposal which, even if not lacking references to the aforementioned underground, manages to be a decent example of erosion between that nihilistic sound characterizing the end of the seventies, and that powerful emerging sound vibration called heavy metal, not affecting, despite its scarce half-hour duration, the absolute organicity of the L.p. The foundations of a sound that initially managed to be spontaneously non-conformist and deliberately hybrid, stem from the genuineness of the components of a band born and raised in the unruffled nature of its natural habitat to which time has generously duly recognized the role of the progenitor of all grunge formations.

[In 1990, "Rehab Doll" was released in CD/cassette format with the E.p. "Dry As A Bone"].