Melvins – Five Legged Dog [2CD]

Description

Where to begin with a new Melvins release?

Their latest offering, the acoustic retrospective,Five Legged Dog, finds the Melvins unstuck in time, the musicalversion of Vonneguts Billy Pilgrim, quantum-vaulting between eras and eardrums. At once going forwards andbackwards. Is it mere coincidence the album’s epicentre should be a rendering of the Stones rocker, Sway, withconspicuous keystone lyrics, Did you ever wake up to find / A day that broke up your mind / Destroyed your notionof circular time.

Five Legged Dogis a four album beast, atestament to their unmatched work ethic, their penchant for pushing the envelope, then shredding it to bits. SaidMelvins founder, Buzz Osborne,One acoustic record seems like a joke and two is pretty normal, but doing FOUR?!?Thats like going to war against an army of gorillas on LSD.

The Melvins rudder has been their love of other bands, always fans of the good stuff. They were unabashedly Kids InSatan’s Service. But not just KISS… The Who, Throbbing Gristle, Butthole Surfers, Blondie, Flipper and theunfathomable bathysphere of electroacoustic noise… Melvins loved those bands the way you love your oxygen. Andafter all this time, they breathe that music still. The more mordant their cover renditions have been, the deeper theMelvins’ sound has plumbed, until all familiars are hidden, then resolved as newly slabbed granite so massive that todismantle it into its separate sources is unimaginable. Few artists work so hard at exceeding limits, fewer still followabsurdity past all reason and yet, mile upon mile Melvins strike fertile soil of sound and conceptual fury. And withthis album Osborne aimed to make a statement.This a big one. We knew we had to do something massive to provewe werent fucking around.

According to Crover,These four albums represent a career retrospective. Indeed,Five Legged Dogtakes ameasured sampling of their recorded works, alternating selections from Big Business-era albums,Nude With Boots,The Bride Screamed Murder,(A) Senile Animal, and the tragically under-appreciatedBulls and Bees,and pairingthem with ancient pagan favouritesStoner Witch,HonkyandHoudini(whose iconic album cover, curiously, depictsa two-headed mutt, no doubt the same rabid bitch that years later spawned this eponymous five-legged dog).Melvins diehards will foam at the 36-song track list which includes Edgar The Elephant, Revolve, The Bit,Hooch, Anaconda, Billy Fish, as well as a no-way-they-can-do-that-acoustically version of Honey Bucket.

So here we are. A four-album acoustic retrospective that somehow evades nostalgia. Did you expect, somethingpredictable? This is The Melvins, after-all.

Tracklist:

1. Edgar the Elephant
2. Up the Dumper
3. Hung Bunny
4. Hooch
5. Billy Fish
6. Shevil
7. Charlie
8. A Growing Disgust
9. Eye Flys / Woman
10. Pitfalls in Serving Warrants
11. Outside Chance
12. Evil New War God
13. The Bloated Pope
14. Bad Move
15. With Teeth
16. Halo of Flies
17. Oven
18. Sway
19. Anaconda
20. Lovely Butterflies
21. Boris
22. It’s Shoved
23. Honey Bucket
24. We Are Doomed
25. Fly Paper
26. Let God Be Your Gardener
27. At the Stake
28. Night Goat
29. Queen
30. Everybody’s Talking
31. Revolve
32. Suicide in Progress
33. Prig
34. The Bit
35. Civilized Worm
36. Don’t Forget to Breathe

UPC: 689230023821
Label: Ipecac Recordings
Release Date: 10.15.21
Format: CD