Melvins: Nude With Boots
It’s been a long time coming, but now that I’ve added Nude With Boots, released only two weeks ago, a mere nanosecond in MPL time, my Melvins collection is as updated as it’s been since before we entered our “poor period” and signed over our firstborn to My Baby’s business school. Of their studio albums, I’m basically just missing the ones with Jello Biafra (so maybe I won’t buy anything they do). In fact, I had a signed copy of this disc a day before it was even available in stores, which left me feeling kind of super-complete.
A quick diversion, though, because this is critical. All albums listened to primarily on sunny days are going to get the shaft around here. You see, when it’s sunny, I sit upstairs by the windows to increase my happiness, and listen on my iPod. When it’s not, I work downstairs in my office, in front of my stereo. Lots of music sounds like crap on my iPod, partially because it doesn’t allow a custom EQ setting. Dear Apple, screw you.
So The Black Keys got rewritten at the last minute, and Jawbox sounded a ton better right before it got posted, but since I’d already re-written one review last week I couldn’t bring myself to do another. Anyway, I’m writing this now because Nude With Boots was mostly listened to on a cloudy morning, but sounds much worse now on a sunny afternoon.
That may just mean Melvins sound better on cloudy days, and that makes sense for a band born in the dreary darkness of Aberdeen, WA. For the last few years, though, they have been sounding more and more like a band from their current home in sunny California. They’ve been playing less slow, sludgy, gloom and instead concentrating on more upbeat, straight, but no less heavy, metal with riffs that most listeners can easily grasp on to.
That trend continues with Nude With Boots, another very accessible album, at least relative to most Melvins material. There’s still sludge (“Dog Island,” “It Tastes Better Than The Truth”) and noisy sound-fests (“Flush,” “It Tastes Better Than The Truth”). For the most part, though, everything sounds a little brighter and more orthodox. For one track they even do a cover of the 13th century Latin hymn “Dies Irae” (“Dies Iraea”), though of course that hardly sounds familiar or comfortable to 21st century ears.
Instead, for their current release, Melvins seem content to screw with your mind with tricky rhythms. You won’t notice it at first, but on closer listen, “Suicide In Progress,” which might be the best song on here, will reveal some very confusing beats. I think part of it might be in 17. And on “The Smiling Cobra,” which gives “Suicide In Progress” a run for the Nude With Boots best song crown, I even have trouble finding beat one in parts, and it might not even be there…they may have discarded the idea of measures altogether, something that they tended to do early in their career as well.
This is a very good, immensely enjoyable album from start to finish, though there’s nothing here that’s quite as arresting as the best songs from A Senile Animal. Additionally, it might just be a bit too straight in parts. “The Stupid Creep” is awfully close to plain vanilla 1990 tough-guy, no-passion metal, as is the pre-vocal part of “Nude With Boots.” There’s some cognitive dissonance that goes along with saying Melvins are too accessible, and, given their track record I can’t believe that label will stick.
Melvins has been around for 24 years now. The world has hardly noticed, but those who have been paying attention stand in awe at one of the most storied careers in musical history. King Buzzo seems to me to be crazy incisive about just about everything, including his musical legacy:
“There are lots of makeshift wonders, seven in the world/Five of them will not be noticed and three will not be heard,” he sings on “Suicide In Progress.” While you’re working out that math, Melvins is touring the world, creating unseen, unheard wonders.
Rating:
Mixers: “The Kicking Machine,” “Suicide In Progress,” “The Smiling Cobra,” “Nude With Boots,” “The Savage Hippy”
Non-keepers: “Flush,” “The Stupid Creep”
Filed Between: The Making Love Demos and Melvins+Lustmord (Pigs Of The Roman Empire)
Tags: 2008, 4 lunchboxes, CD reviews, music