It took over 30 years, but it finally exists: a Dale Crover solo album. The legendary drummer of the Melvins, and even Nirvana for a time (he played on three tracks on Bleach), has long hinted at the possibility of a solo effort. In 1992, he and the Melvins released the aptly titled Dale Crover, a punk rock record that sounded more akin to Sonic Youth than their usual gush of sludge metal. The album is an odd but illuminating look into the mind of Crover, and a clear reminder of his musical origin: a garage band called Fecal Matter with Kurt Cobain (both are from Aberdeen, Wash.) in the 1980s. Crover’s always had the energy and savage edge to be a singular metal drummer. But he’s also a gifted grunge and rock artist, a genuine punk at heart. If The Fickle Finger of Fate proves anything, it’s that, for the better part of three decades, Crover’s been dreaming—reminiscing maybe—about the good old days with Kurt.
It’s easy, then, to imagine songs like “Hooch,” a track that Cobain himself produced on the Melvins’ 1993 album Houdini, as source material for Fickle Finger. In his work from around that time, Crover doesn’t overcomplicate his arrangements, nor does he steal the air away from the music’s dredging guitar; instead, he balances the heaviness of the soundscape. Simplicity is his preference, his greatest tool in doing so. He pulsates and thunders along, confidently letting the aftermath of his cannon-beat filter evenly throughout the rest of the distortion. He was rarely the focal point—he mostly ensured there was none.
But on The Fickle Finger of Fate, Crover is now front and center, and it’s a bizarre place for him to be. He wrote, played, and recorded most of the album himself, and in this way, it’s almost melancholic in how it plays like an old demo, like a tape your friend might’ve handed you in 1992. Only six of the 20 tracks are longer than three minutes. The production is muffled, Crover’s voice hooded with noise. While the album spans a few genres, it doesn’t develop them fully: some of the shorter tracks like “String Bean” and “Prismo” beg to be fleshed out into full songs. Others, like the 14-seconds-long “Our Supreme Leader,” have no business being slotted between a song crafted around noise-rock and another trying to be Pink Floyd.
In fact, the numerous short interludes on Fickle Finger end up disrupting the progression of the music more than connecting it. The hard-nosed, grinding anthem “Big Uns” is one of the album’s best tracks—but instead of carrying its momentum, the two jabbing interludes that follow take you to the slow and woozy (and acoustic) title track. In this regard, it’s difficult to see what the album adds up to beyond a mixed bag of half-baked rhythms and riffs.
As the fickle finger of fate would have it, the Melvins themselves now seem to suffer from the same indecisiveness and lack of focus. Their latest full-length, A Walk With Love & Death, was released earlier this year and it is formed by two distinct collections. “Death,” the first part of the album, delivers the usual wash of avant-garde drone and sludge that has boringly come to be expected of 21st-century Melvins. “Love,” the second part, is actually an original and interesting sound collage and soundtrack for a short film directed and produced by the band’s friend Jesse Nieminen.
“Love” is an intriguing assortment of samples, stray recordings, noises, sound effects, conversations, and Moog-esque tones. Experimental though it may be, it’s not unlike 2001’s Colossus of Destiny, an hour-long trek through the din and drain of stitched together samples. The colorful confusion of sound, the unpredictability of the coagulating fragments, makes the music almost imagistic and allows it to exist on its own terms both as a film score and as a sonic portrait of people, places, and scenes. “The Asshole Bastard,” “Park Head,” and “T-Burg” in particular offer up humor, urbanity, and warmth. It’s unusual stuff even for the Melvins, and for a band 34 years into an unusual career, that’s no easy feat.
Unfortunately, “Love” is preceded by “Death,” which, as a general rule of thumb in the universe, is rarely a good thing. The two distinct parts of A Walk With Love & Death are entirely weighed down by their own differences: they do not meet at any central point, motif, or musical concept. The darkness and fuzziness of “Death,” in many ways, counteracts the careful piecing together of “Love,” just as the meandering nature of “Love” pushes back against the groove-bound tightness of “Death.” They deflate and distract from one another to the detriment of the whole assemblage.
The Melvins, and of course Crover, may be determined to continue experimenting and wandering at this point. But they should be warned: not all ventures outward lead you to a better inward place.
