Outside of a brief period in the early 1990s, Mudhoney has never been fashionable. And this has been entirely by design-- except for the early 90s part, which the band probably would have rather avoided. When Mudhoney was given a plum spot next to Pearl Jam and Soundgarden on the Singles soundtrack-- the Saturday Night Fever of alt-rock-- it dropped a stinkbomb inside Seattle’s coronation as rock’s “it” city: “Overblown” opened with Mark Arm famously snarling, “Everybody loves us/ Everybody loves our town / That's why I'm thinkin' lately/ Time for leavin' is now.” On the new Vanishing Point, Arm is still playing the cranky contrarian, only now he has two extra decades of pent-up pissiness to vent at wannabe ballers. “You’ve always been the critics’ darling,” Arm bellows at some unfortunate unnamed band-of-the-month on the caustic rant “Chardonnay”. “Get the fuck out of my backstage!”
Arriving at a time when the indie vanguard has about as much to do with punk as Glitter has to do with Apocalypse Now, Vanishing Point is both an anachronism and, if you’re on Mudhoney’s wavelength, a hilarious bulwark against everything that’s annoyingly ephemeral about contemporary underground culture. It sounds like the last stand of Generation X: Vanishing Point is a righteous rallying cry in favor of cynicism, irony, anti-mainstream posturing, and all of those other antiquated concepts that have been deconstructed and discredited in these new, pop-obsessed times. How refreshing that after all the countless trends that once threatened to wipe out bands of their ilk, Mudhoney is still here and not giving a fuck. “I don’t care if you think I’m a prick,” Arm leers gamely over the transgressive garage-rock thump of “I Don’t Remember You”. “It’s clear to me you’re the same piece of shit.”
Like all born-and-bred bastards, Arm has actually gotten funnier and more charming with age. Perhaps that’s because the 51-year old’s barbs are now as benign as the typical complaints of any out-of-touch middle-aged guy. His “piece of shit” riff on “I Don’t Remember You” is inspired by running into a pushy dude from back in the day who slaps his back too hard at the grocery store. On the smart-ass “What to Do With the Neutral”, he mocks anyone who insists he should have a positive attitude; on “Sing this Song of Joy”, he slips into a full-on taunt: “I sing this song of joy/ For all the girls and boys/ Dancing on your grave.” Mark Arm’s primary influence is no longer Iggy Pop, it’s Larry David.
Vanishing Point is the first Mudhoney record in five years, the longest-ever gap between LPs for the band. Given where Mudhoney is at in its career-- still able to tour around the world, but hardly a big moneymaking proposition-- there’s no guarantee there will be another album. So, it’s nice to hear these guys playing about as well as they ever have on record: The tangle of Steve Turner’s erratic soloing and Dan Peters’ hyperactive drum fills on opener “Slipping Away” are so defiantly Mudhoney-sounding that it single-handedly justifies the price of admission. The difference between Mudhoney in 2013 and the Mudhoney of old is that what once seemed highly flammable is now reassuring. Mudhoney projects tradition and endurance, not danger; the band’s appeal these days is rooted in not spontaneously combusting, so that it can still exist when most of Mudhoney’s contemporaries are extinct.
Not that Mudhoney is resigned to being a museum piece. On “I Like It Small”, Arm is back in “Overblown” mode, going on about the superiority of GG Allin, “intimate settings,” “dingy basements,” and (most important of all) “no expectations” over whatever the opposite of those things are. At the start of the song, Arm sounds alone, buried in the kicked-up smoke of screaming guitars and pounding drums. But by the end, a chorus of people has joined him-- he’s a voice in the wilderness with the backing of a no-longer-marginalized army. What else is new?
