6. MelvinsGluey Porch Treatments
One of the things about so-called weirdo music is that if it’s at all self-confident, it pulls the bottom out of it. All of the things I’ve picked just have so much confidence. Each one absolutely believes in itself. They’re not fucking around, they’re not making wacky music, they’re making the best music they can. The thing about this album is it’s like Captain Beefheart came out with Trout Mask Replica while he was a teenager.
Fuck me, talk about a band setting up their store right from the out. Had they split up right after this, and it was just a weird one-off, it still wouldn’t matter. I love Melvins, and like most of what they’ve done, but this album seems to exist in a completely different space. If Shudder To Think swaggers, this lurches. At the beginning, it’s almost like some kind of ominous classical music. Matt Lukin does that bass intro and the drums start thundering in and the weird feedback, then finally – finally – this tune emerges out of the swamp. The balls of these guys! It’s their first album, and normally you’d come crashing in with something that gets people, but they just leave it. They’re masters of doing things too many times or letting things go on a bit too long. I love them. There’s a bit in the middle of ‘As It Was’ where it goes into a quote-unquote normal tune, and it just makes it more weird – the fact that in the middle of this gluey swamp, it goes into this regular rock song which then disappears again. I love the sound of the record as well. The record that came after, Ozma, sounds really brittle, thin and trebly, like it was produced with an electric razor. But Gluey just sounds wonderful. Melvins are one of those bands, like Cardiacs and Zappa, where you could meet someone who says they only listen to Melvins, and you’d say, "Fair enough." They’ve got everything. They’re so prolific. And Dale Crover is one of the great rock drummers. If he hits a ride cymbal once, you can tell it’s him.
