Better Than Nevermind -- No. 4 : Honeymoon Killers - Hung Far Low

Honeymoon Killers - Hung Far Low (Fist Puppet)

How did that one end up on my list I haven’t the slightest clue. The cassette I had was obliterated by a 8-track adapter after being played to death and the copy I had made is nowhere to be found (someone liked it more than I do). I think the most probable reason is the collaboration of Jon Spencer on that record, a musician I started following in Pussy Galore and didn’t let up until the end of the 1990s while he was in his Blues Explosion. The record starts with Mad Dog, a rave-up, as dirty and bluesy as possible, that gets derailed by the wild drumming of Russell Sims. The guitar interplay and mangled vocals recall The Cramps but shredded through a blender of hisses. The second song has tortured vocals that sound like a crying child or a distorted harmonica, and after skipping on a blues motif gets straight to rave-up until we’re unsure if Spencer or Teel is on vocal duties. Mr. Big Stuff goes back to dirty blues with a throbbing bass to the forefront. The real centerpiece of the album is the 7 minute Vanna White (Goddess of Love)/You Can’t Do That, which unfurls like a very (very) drunk seventies era Rolling Stones boogie which pauses almost ineptly, only to restart again in rave-up and guitar interplay. Quittin’ Time slows the tempo towards a more mud-soaked delta blues approach, before twanging and squeezing instruments helicoidally, the guitars twisting around a drum motif that is more jerk and tear, a strategy which would be later applied in Blue Explosion. Devil’s Jump focused on the music and could be the most ‘traditional’ number of the band, with percussive strumming and marching beat, until the end is twisted out of form à la Pussy Galore. Tanks A Lot is more of a rocker but adds congas and Fannie Mae goes back to the voodoobilly roots of HK that winds up and down but never lets up, with the next short bursts – Scootch Says and Something’s Wrong -- bringing the listener further into the black wall of noise that is simultaneously groovy dissonant and dirty, which only maybe Sonic Youth or Band Of Susans can do better.The album ends on puns on song names, one by Hooker (Madwoman Blues) where we finally hear the raucous and wonderfully unintelligible vocals of the bass player, Lisa Wells, and another by Zeppelin (Whole Lotta Crap) that end with maximally distorted vocals, bass and guitars added to the stellar pounding drums by Russell Simms.

Never has messing around a studio sounded so disgustingly perfect.