Fricke’s Picks: Mudhoney
Incorrigible and indestructible, Seattle's real supersonics, Mudhoney, celebrate 20 years of naked garage rock with a shotgun blast. Their 1988 six-song EP, Superfuzz Bigmuff (Sub Pop), named after a pair of popular distortion pedals, is now two out-of-control CDs with extra singles (such as the seminal grunge grenade "Touch Me I'm Sick"), demos and live cuts. There is also a new studio assault, The Lucky Ones (Sub Pop), which opens with singer Mark Arm howling "I'm Now" and, in that song's chorus, rewriting the Rolling Stones' version of Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain" like the '69 Iggy Pop ("The black light was my baby/And the strobe light was my mind"). The band cut the album in three and a half days. It shows — in the right ways.