|
Mule -- If I Don't Six 1/4 Stick
For all their rep as barn-storming hellbillies. the finest moments encoded here are the quiet and slightly muddled ones. "A Hundred Years" is the best song Tom Waits never wrote, a sad-eyed moper 'bout l'armour morte ("I'd have to live a hundred years to let it go") that twists the knife just fine, in "Nowhere's Back" eerie keyboards watch while the song drags itself towards some kinda awful denouement, and "piano" is "Afterhours" if the VU were suddenly lost in Kentucky. And although these fucks have some structural/production similarities to a useless pack of weasels called the Jesus Lizard, Mule actually sound like they have souls instead of egos, and possess a creepiness that doesn't come off as canned (yet). If you dug the soused goin' nowhere manhood of early Cows/Flesheaters/Halo Of Flies, you're gonna wanna poke around in this pile... -Ed Sullivan |