Mudhoney: Vanishing Point

Before Nirvana, before Pearl Jam, before Smashing Pumpkins, there was Mudhoney. Credited with creating the sound of Seattle, the godfathers of grunge sound as revved up on their ninth album as they were when they released their first EP on the then-fledgling Sup Pop label back in 1988.

There’s a moment, around one minute and 25 seconds into album opener, ‘Slipping Away’, when Mark Arm groans, “Baby, baby, oh baby, yeah”, and it’s as if something has slipped into place and all is right with the world, even just for a split second. It’s not profound, for sure, but allied to the backbone of Dan Peters’ tub-thumping drums and Guy Maddison’s muscular bass, alongside the whir and whine of Steve Turner’s serrated guitar, it just feels, well, right.
They certainly can’t be accused of taking themselves too seriously. The hilariously tongue-in-cheek ‘I Like It Small’ could be a Kiss cover, all power chords and shouty vocals, with Arm listing the little things that float his boat these days: “Minimum production, low yields, intimate settings, limited appeal / Dingy basements, short runs, no expectations... I’ve got big enough balls to admit I like it small.”
Other highlights include the laugh-out-loud ‘Chardonnay’, a full-on rant where Arm lambasts “the grape that launched a thousand strippers”; current single, ‘The Only Son Of The Widow From Nain’, possibly the first punk classic based on a bible story (“Fuckin’ Lazarus got all the fame”); and ‘I Don’t Remember You’, which sounds like Iggy and The Stooges doing doo-wop. Less impressive are the mid-paced ‘What To Do With The Neutral’ and ‘In This Rubber Tomb’, which are a bit ‘Honey by numbers. They may never have achieved the celebrity of the bands they inspired, but 25 years in, there’s still enough gas in the Mudhoney tank to crank out fun, dumb rock licks like a band half their age.