| Format: | LP |
| Availability: | In stock |
SP1225X
28/09/2018
Light Blue Opaque Loser Coloured Vinyl. Mark Arm, Steve Turner, Guy Maddison, and Dan Peters are back with Digital Garbage, a barbed-wire-trimmed collection of sonic brickbats. Arm's raw yawp and his bandmates' long-honed chemistry make Digital Garbage an ideal release valve for the 2018 pressure cooker. Digital Garbage opens with the swaggering Nerve Attack, which can be heard as a nod both to modern-life anxiety and the ever-increasing threat of warfare. The album's title comes from the outro of Kill Yourself Live, which segues from a revved-up Arm organ solo into a bleak look at the way notoriety goes viral. Appropriately enough, bits of recent news events float through the record: Please Mr. Gunman, on which Arm bellows "We'd rather die in church!" over his bandmates' careening charge, was inspired by a TV-news bubblehead's response to a 2017 church shooting, while the ominous refrain that opens the submerged-blues of Next Mass Extinction calls back to last summer's clashes in Charlottesville. Mudhoney's core sound - steadily pounding drums, swamp-thing bass, squalling guitar wobble, Arm's hazardous-chemical voice - remains on Digital Garbage, which the band recorded with longtime collaborator (and Digital Garbage pianist) Johnny Sangster at the Seattle studio Litho. Digital Garbage closes with Oh Yeah, a brief celebration of skateboarding, surfing, biking, and the joy provided by these escape valves. Mudhoney, however, know what does make great rock - and the riffs and fury of Digital Garbage will stand the test of time, even if the particulars fade away.