To essay a concise, surefooted summation of the Melvins' catalog would be reductive at best, and laughable at worst. This is, of course, underground rock's trio of pranksters -- unpredictable and capable of complete musical about-faces in the turn of a measure. That said, Houdini is about as close as one gets to a representative Melvins album, and it vividly captures the band's unreconstructed power, vision, and musical strangeness. During the early-'90s purge of hair rock and candy-footed funk metal, the Melvins, as with many other acts, seemed fair game for a major label in search of another post-Nirvana gold mine. With Kurt Cobain's assistance, the band was snatched up -- and summarily dropped (after three brilliant albums, this being the first) -- by Atlantic. Though Houdini's immediate predecessors, Eggnog and Bullhead, pried open a few screwball chasms in the Melvins' syrupy distillation of Sabbath riffage and Flipper's noisy anti-punk, it was this album that displayed the full fruition of the outfit's sonic breadth, from the cough-syrup river drag of "Night Goat" to the revved-up "Honey Bucket," and from the creepy "Joan of Arc" to the glue-damaged "Sky Pup." Ringleader King Buzzo's riffs are stretched -- taffy-like -- to meltdown, and at other times they are razor sharp. Either way, they abound with a lumbering, lurching power. With their voluminous output and determination to continuously expand their sound regardless of musical trends, the Melvins oeuvre has begun to rival -- at least on paper -- the career arcs of Frank Zappa and Neil Young. ~ Patrick Kennedy
Melvins: King Buzzo (vocals, guitar); Dale (vocals, drums); Lorax (bass).
Additional personnel: Kurt Cobain (guitar, percussion); Bill Bartell (guitar, bass); Billy Anderson (bass); Al Smith, Mike Supple (percussion).
Recorded at Brilliant Studios and Razor's Edge, San Francisco, California; Laundry Room, Seattle, Washington.
- Format: Vinyl
- Genre: Rock
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Track Listing:
A1 Hooch
A2 Night Goat
A3 Lizzy
A4 Going Blind
A5 Honey Bucket
A6 Hag Me
B1 Set Me Straight
B2 Sky Pup
B3 Joan Of Arc
B4 Teet
B5 Copache
B6 Pearl Bomb
B7 Rocket Reducer #62 (Rama Lama FaFaFa)
