With Under a Billion Suns, Mark Arm and company whip out their best Iggy and launch a little Rocket From The Crypt, tackling politics, and yet, keeping it pure Sasquatch rock.
It’s a strange recipe to swallow. Mudhoney has a nearly twenty year-old reputation to live up to. That’s almost two decades with hardly a stinker of an album. Now they come at us with a record that has a slight odor of politics and a strong, screaming horn section.
Is Mudhoney in there??
You’re goddamn right it is.
You can imagine what Arm smells like while you listen to him gripe about America’s hegemony and innate human idiocy. You can envision snot running down Dan Peters’ and Steve Turner’s noses as they respectively beat and thresh out sludgy jams. And you know Guy Maddison is damn proud to be the new signature bass that IS the MUD in Mudhoney. It may take a couple minutes to digest the horn section, but you will.
Under an eerie alien invasion of solar bells, Arm belts out, “I’ve seen the enemy, and it is us!” on the aptly titled “It Is Us” —nearly displaying a regard for humanity that was once unimaginable from the nail-side perspective of an upturned Mudhoney middle finger. But there’s no loss of that “Touch Me I’m Sick” dark humor. Take the title alone: “Hard-on For War…”
Yes, the army is still alive and waging sonic warfare in the Pacific NW. A little different? Sure. But even Sasquatches evolve.
