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Rating: The importance of being Rob Crow: part 1
In the '90s, if you wanted to express your inner turmoil through notes—which, for some reason, was the shared one of thousands of young people like the then-you—you had three ways to do it: learn to play power chords flannelled from head to toe, reduce the electricity consumption of your instrument in amateur, unauthorized, and low-fidelity recordings, or refrain from going out for a while, become aloof and a bit intellectual, just to gain a nice instrumental culture, educate yourself on the guitar and come out in a cul de sac, in the territory of spiders. Then, finally, there were also those a bit obtuse, the nerdiest fringe, who breathed windows from morning to night and couldn't care less about inter-genre barriers, continuing to express themselves and the essence of their music in their very personal way (or not?).
Heavy, bearded, bespectacled, terribly dressed, probably also a bit allergic to water and soap—at least the male members—Heavy Vegetable had everything to be fully counted among these sparse lines. Their lung, spokesperson, singer, guitarist, and sacristan was named Rob Crow. But, as often happens in these cases, like all people a bit too clever, Crow made eclecticism his raison d'être and often became elusive to label hunters and classifiers. Because not only was he unattractive and good-natured, but he also loved to listen to a lot of music, of all kinds, and then incorporate it into his daily experience. It was 1994, not the Pleistocene or the Carboniferous, and already there were the problems of being only this or only that. But why, the group wondered, play grunge if we also like Pavement? Why tell the world that Minor Threat were great dudes if then we locked ourselves in the recording studio to listen to John Lee Hooker's vinyl records and liked them just the same? Why, in short, decide which side to be on, if there was enough room to sprawl over all lanes? Good question, which should be read by the new generation of musical (minds?)... Crow and crew, just to make the pun nobody missed, do not concern themselves with these problems. And they dare. Indeed: they choose the path, for them, most normal.
"The Amazing Undersea Adventures Of Aqua Kitty And Friends" is, thus, the "Double Nickels On The Dime" of the '90s, exactly a decade after the release of the Minutemen's double masterpiece. Like the trio led by D. Boon, Heavy Vegetable churn out seventeen tracks with an extremely concise average length—only one track is over three minutes, another over four—where they indulge in a mix of everything, challenging the rampant sectarianism. Acoustic pieces, folk, rock, grunge, lo-fi, punk, post-rock, hardcore explosions, noise disturbances. But don’t think of the classic jumble, where there's a wealth of everything only for the self-celebration of the musicians' immense egos. Maybe due to the absence of a cult of personality among the band members, the union sounds absolutely compact and at the same time divisible into many small segments, depending on the will of the listener. This is yet another sign of the freshness of the material presented, which literally drowns in a melting pot of ideas and cues—a true reservoir of looting that will constitute the Eldorado of entire streams of artists.
The initial "Thingy", voice and acoustic guitar with a grated ending, then flows into the impetuous post-punk of "Saloon", like Fugazi recording a split with Buzzcocks (and maybe even getting drunk), early acts of a genealogy of rock of drinkable duration that will later articulate in the time changes of "Eggy In A Bready II", the unlikely assault of "Doesn't Mean Shit" based on breaks, restarts, and rolls, a splinter like "Myliebetz" that combines power pop and punk, the saturated distortions of "Couch" (a version of the Melvins with less rock and Ray Davies instead of King Buzzo), the whispered lullaby of "Listen To This Song, Kill Pigs And Try To Sue Me", with the electric guitar shrilling the most unfortunate of lullabies (Crow must love Stephen Malkmus a lot) and elegant Brit rock in Chains sauce of "Head Rush", a spit to Madchester before its time.
Very quickly, the album becomes a real fun experience, which is really hard to resist—it's almost unnatural to do so—and the addiction reaches acute levels. Often surprising is the combination of such unlikely pieces that nevertheless work as never expected. Deep theoretical knowledge or simple, passionate attachment to one's "craft"? If, absurdly, neither the melancholy of the acoustic ballad "Termites" nor the subsequent instrumental post-rock of "Calling The Toads"—both under two minutes!—provide a clear answer, know that you still have a very well-stocked selection to choose from, be it the grunge cabaret of "Johnny Pig", the wavering closure on the roots of "Means Less" or the mutable math ride of "Dutch". Woe to you, however, if you take everything that is proposed with a smile on your lips, because the surprise is around the corner. Double: first "Eight" (with a funk drift), then "Black Suit" (filled with fuzz), are true hardcore outbursts with a thousand rhythms and a scraping unsuspected. Practically the Black Flag filled with bubblegum and then exploded into nothingness.
These, gentlemen, were Heavy Vegetable.
Today Rob Crow is still very heavy, very bearded, and moderately unattractive. He writes, plays, composes, and enjoys himself in abundance, just like before. But this, it must be said, is another story that, if you have the patience to follow me, will be told later on...
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