Mudhoney - 'Since We've Become Translucent' (Sub Pop)
3/5
By: Toby L
Tireless legends Mudhoney are back with this, their eighth studio-album, arising from a career that has so far defined a musical-era and generation ('grunge', if you didn't know, darling) and a status as one of the most influential acts of recent times. And 'Since We've Become Translucent' is certainly set to continue the trend that their career has taken thus far, serving as all-encompassing in the way of genre-fusing, experimentation, and accessibility.
Featuring frontman Mark Arm's beguiling growl throughout, whose instantly charismatic drawl evokes the spirit of original delta-blues, whilst immediately smacking the likes of The Hives' Screamin' Pelle in the face and demanding his abdication from the throne as today's supremo garage-rock guru, this is just as instrumentally impacting. So, whilst your face may curl and mouth drop open as you adjust to the thrillingly retro opener, the sumptuous, 60s-alt mess of 'Baby, Can You Dig The Light', the guitars of 'The Straight Life' soon kick in and dismiss any scary assumptions that the 'Honey have gone all hippie-esque on us, the suitably arms-aloft, horns-feast of 'Where The Flavour Is' providing enough to bite into for wholehearted satisfaction.
Where the project may fall down, however, is in its quest to be quite so polished and raw at the same time; sure, you get the full dynamic of the band's pounding live-energy - yet within the mixed-up production operated by people that seemingly had different aims for the group... Makes sense, really; the LP was put together in three different studios by four different people.
Now, although this move can provide the record with much of its sheer ambivalence and wild sense of drastic urgency, there seem to be conflicting desires throughout: do Mudhoney get marketed as a classic-rock act (see 'Our Time Is Now'); are they tagging along as part of today's scene (observe 'Inside Job'); or are they merely a thunderous pack of musos looking for the local southern-US bar in order to set up, play, and get spat on by the local drunkards (absorb 'Take It Like A Man')? The truth is that they could be each of these - though, as history has proven time and time before, serving as all things to all people tends to be an impossible, unfocussed feat.
So, who does this record appeal to? Essentially, it's for those that don't mind taking a trip down memory-lane, via a sejour into the song-structures of the forward-thinking, energy-stricken youth of today. Conclusively, it results in the early-90s superstars' best album for what seems an age, and a long-player full of enough ideas and vivid imagination to light up an entire music-scene; best suited for those with open minds.
Artists in this article: Mudhoney
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