If Nurse With Wound means anything more to you than "that band that takes up a whole browser in the 'Industrial/Goth' section of my local record store," chances are they inhabit a strange place in your collection. Equally indefinable and uncollectible, Steve Stapleton's Nurse With Wound have spent the past 30 or so years crafting what sounds like indigenous music for household appliances. That Stapleton's latest, Huffin' Rag Blues, has dropped with a silent, drone-y thud even amongst out-music fans is no real surprise, as even NWW cultists aren't starved for material (e.g. 2005's decidedly under-considered Angry Eelectric Finger is receiving a double CD/photo book addendum). Huffin' Rag Blues, a collaboration with, among others, experimental sound artist Andrew Liles, extends Stapleton's exploration of the bizarre and arcane via tricks like obscure and disorienting samples and minimal industrial noise-- this time juxtaposed against bop and swing music.
Huffin' Rag Blues' nods to big band and jazz-- as well as its appropriations of linear, identifiable grooves-- suggests NWW's 1996 question Who Can I Turn to Stereo? might be Stapleton literally asking his boombox for answers (rather than casually pondering who he can transmogrify into a Sony). The aborted album-opening story of "Willy the Weeper", a chimney sweep with a dope problem, starts with a januty accompaniment, and is followed by "Groove Grease (Hot Catz)" and a lounge organ that surprisingly isn't overrun with angsty noise-niblets until its final minute. "Thrill of Romance…?" sets a pulsing horn and spindly Latin guitar work under Freida Abtan's vocals, which sort of sound like Kim Gordon doing standards. "Cruisin' for a Bruisin'" rolls a bass-y horn bauble over careening car noises, the noir of Sin City interpreted as roly-poly funk.
Unfortunately, most of Huffin' Rag Blues is spent accomplishing something most albums this singular and creative couldn't imagine: boredom. Stapleton has ideas for miles but the speedometer's fucked. "Wash the Dust From My Heart" is a straight-played jazz homage replete with a walking bassline and careful xylophone vibes; that it contains occasional ambient interruption does not distract from its six-minute runtime. "Advance single" (ha!) "Ketamineaphonia" opens with a snippet of ballpark organ before settling into five minutes of hapless beat instruction and slight orchestral breaks. "Black Teeth" inconceivably bats around Captain Beefheart congo-skronk, allowing Matt Waldron ample room for a sub-drug conversation between Satan and, um, a man that wouldn't have made the cut of a third-grade puppet show ("And Satan says 'Here comes a storm/ Get off the bus' and the Man says 'Shutup Satan/ Satan shutup' and Satan says "Here comes another stop/ Get your fat ass off the bus'"). "Juice Head Crazy Lady" and "The Funktion of the Hairy Egg" are the most classically NWW tracks here, and while the former sounds inspiringly deranged for four minutes, "Hairy Egg" stands as a 14-minute behemoth mercilessly sequenced in the three-hole, eventually devolving-- predictably, somehow-- into a cacophony of barnyard noise.
Huffin' Rag Blues should probably get points for distinguishing itself from the endless string of NWW releases. The cover art-- pressed in a glossy digipak with colors other than black and photos suggesting things other than sadistic sex-- basically assures as much. Stapleton's complained in the past about his releases floating into the ether, but Huffin' Rag Blues, inspired and deeply flawed, deserves both your consideration and your dismissal. Stapleton's tireless mind merits as much; he was probably right to bitch. And if Huffin' Rag Blues isn't wtf/"Things done changed"/NWW on Demand enough for you, take heart: that Angry Eelectric Finger addendum is eligible for free shipping with Amazon Prime.
