Mudhoney Articles
Aversion.com
September '02
MUDHONEY
Since We've Become Translucent
Every year that goes by, it gets easier and easier to hate grunge. The Nirvana/Love lawsuit is second only
in embarrassing underground-rock legal battles to the Dead Kennedys debacle. Eddie Vedder is, by all accounts,
the music world's reigning pretentious asshole. Revisionist rock critics have somehow managed to make the style
into an offshoot of the metal world rather than some unique punk/metal hybrid – mostly to sell more magazines
with file photos on their covers to a new breed of metalhead. Alice in Chains was such a joke that few people
could even muster a sigh, let alone a tear, when Layne Staley mainilned earlier this year.
Don't pack the flannel off to Goodwill yet. As the mainstream let its curiosity for the Seattle scene grow
from interest to hoo-ha to complete and total overexposure – thus prematurely withering the style in a
much-too-bright spotlight – Mudhoney has somehow survived. No, they've never been the most commercial, the
most intriguing, the most influential and, honestly, the most interesting of the grunge years, but they have
stayed the course. Take that, Eddie Vedder.
With Since We've Become Translucent, the band's return to its old home at Sub Pop Records, there's
still hope for grunge a decade after it broke (and seemingly couldn't be fixed). The metal-fueled riffery is back,
possibly more so than ever, thanks to the prominent work of Led Zeppelin and psychedelic rock influences. The
punk-addled noise is there too, but Mudhoney is doing anything but reliving the grunge glory days. The fingerprints
of the style it helped to create are all over Since We've Become Translucent, but, unlike virtually every
other grunge revivalist, the band doesn't sound like it's hopping aboard a time machine and setting course for the
first Bush administration.
Since We've Become Translucent is grunge, but somewhat modernized. The band's ability to embrace its
roots without becoming entangled in them is largely due to its heavy classic-rock leanings this time out:
"Where The Flavor" splits punk noise with acid-eater guitar work with a sound that's equal parts 1991
and 1967; "Sonic Infusion," a jam that's nearly seven minutes long mixes blues-metal guitar work with
the act's dirty production that sounds as if the ghost of Jimi Hendrix was just seen in a Tad T-shirt. Other
tracks go in even more curious directions, with a strange saxophone-riddled track that swallows a Rocket From
the Crypt vibe ("Take it Like a Man"), while another embraces the band's old garage-punk leanings
("Dyin' For It").
Mudhoney proves that, in a broad fashion, grunge isn't dead. That's probably a good thing to indie fans, although
the act still doesn't have what it takes to spawn any sort of revival. Since We've Become Translucent is nice,
loud and dirty, though by no means as essential as anything that dates from Mudhoney's heyday.
