These are another band that I really ought to have investigated back in my student days although, in my defence, it was a lot harder to “shop around” in the days before streaming music on the internet. You pretty much had to be good enough friends with somebody to be able to get a listen to their music, or hand them a C90 cassette for a bit of piracy.
Soundwise this album is referred to after the fact as the birthplace of grunge, but there’s more going on with the sound beyond fuzzy guitars and the sense that this is where Nirvana nicked their music from. The track Tarpit is more like a shoegaze-noise affair closer to Ride, or Smashing Pumpkins even. Kracked has some glorious Hendrix-style guitar work which we haven’t really heard for a long time, guitarist J Mascis giving it some great licks that abruptly cut away just to be deliciously awkward. The closing track, Poledo, begins with some gentle ukelele strumming that then becomes intermixed with white noise/found sounds, a little bit like Pere Ubu.
Each track is surprisingly short as well, which in some cases means that you’re just getting into it and it ends, but also means that nothing outstays its welcome. Each one is a little polished gem of alt-rock/indie and a sign of things to come.
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