Stag

the MELVINS

   Curt Cobain wanted to be the fourth member of this threesome. Fortunately they thought he was a freak. Otherwise we might not of had Nirvana and the Melvins just wouldn't be the Melvins.
  Stag is maybe the strangest Melvins album yet and there are quite a few strange ones. One minute Buzz is scaring the hell out of you; the next you're giggling like a little kid. It's their tongue in cheek approach to the heavy that makes them so unique. Stag blends an array of unique sounds for the Melvins. You can hear slide guitar, synthesizers, a grand piano, valve trombone and a sitar. They must have had a blast putting this one together. It took me a while to get the song "Cottonmouth" is performed entirely by drummer Dale Crover. It's hard to understand the words until you realize his mouth is stuffed full of cotton. Stag still has its trademark Melvins appeal in the appropriately named "Goggles" and you can almost feel the metal shavings hit your face.
-matte black

MOLE review of Melvins show



Odelay

BECK

   America has a new Woodie Guthrie. Beck's childlike aproach to songwriting and music making are the real deal. He has reinvented the sound of folk music. And though it may sound like rap, techno, industrial or hip hop it is at its core folk music, and that can't be contrived in some corporate office.
  To sum up Odelay by describing a song from it would be futile, it is too rich- too complex. I can't describe all music from the past 75 years in one song but Beck can. You should listen.
-matte black



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