Melvins 8211 Houdini LP

To essay a concise, surefooted summation of the Melvins\’ catalog would be reductive at best, and laughable at worst. This is, of course, underground rock\’s trio of pranksters — unpredictable and capable of complete musical about-faces in the turn of a measure. That said, Houdini is about as close as one gets to a representative Melvins album, and it vividly captures the band\’s unreconstructed power, vision, and musical strangeness. During the early-\’90s purge of hair rock and candy-footed funk metal, the Melvins, as with many other acts, seemed fair game for a major label in search of another post-Nirvana gold mine. With Kurt Cobain\’s assistance, the band was snatched up — and summarily dropped (after three brilliant albums, this being the first) — by Atlantic. Though Houdini\’s immediate predecessors, Eggnog and Bullhead, pried open a few screwball chasms in the Melvins\’ syrupy distillation of Sabbath riffage and Flipper\’s noisy anti-punk, it was this album that displayed the full fruition of the outfit\’s sonic breadth, from the cough-syrup river drag of \”Night Goat\” to the revved-up \”Honey Bucket,\” and from the creepy \”Joan of Arc\” to the glue-damaged \”Sky Pup.\” Ringleader King Buzzo\’s riffs are stretched — taffy-like — to meltdown, and at other times they are razor sharp. Either way, they abound with a lumbering, lurching power. With their voluminous output and determination to continuously expand their sound regardless of musical trends, the Melvins oeuvre has begun to rival — at least on paper — the career arcs of Frank Zappa and Neil Young. -All Music Guide