Mudhoney
Five Dollar Bob's Mock Cooter Stew

What were you doing between 9:30 and 10:30 PM on August 1st, 1993? As for me, I don't have precise memories about that.

The Mudhoney, in this short span of time, were in a recording studio in Ballard, a neighborhood of Seattle, putting five of the seven songs contained in this EP on tape. I imagine the roars of laughter, the chaos created by these four ruffians while recording the tracks; rivers of alcohol (and I fear not only alcohol) making everything more lively and vibrant. It comes as it comes, with no possibility to remedy certain mistakes.

This mini-album with the tragicomic and mile-long title, not to mention the cover, is not well-regarded by so-called music critics; to be precise, it is the least appreciated work by Mudhoney. But not by yours truly. It is a record, like nearly all those released in the phantasmagoric career of the terrible hooligans from the American Northwest, that contains many of the characteristic elements of their raw sound.

Mark’s hoarse and graceless vocal approach, engaged in his usual vitriolic screams; distorted guitars oozing filth and sonic dirt. With the rhythm section of "lumberjacks" Dan and Matt grinding everything down.

So another Mudhoney record that rocks and cuts you in half...naturally, given what is written just above!

The impetuous Garage-Noise of "No Song III" with an extremely acidic fuzz-fuzz ending from the two six-strings; the semi-acoustic Country-Psychobilly of the subsequent track "Between Me & You Kid," disarming in its controlled simplicity. The raw and hallucinatory, almost five-minute crescendo of "Make It Now Again," which is a remake of the famous "Make It Now" from the previous album: legendary is the mid-track passage where a liquefied bass takes over for a few moments before a heart-pounding finale with guitars returning to dominate the scene.

It closes with the short "Underide"; we are in the realm of the darkest and most sinister Cramps: Garage-Blues-Psychedelic that makes you, at least in my case, lick your chops.

Five stars; nothing else to add.

Ad Maiora.