Sweet & Dirty

By Lizz Kannenberg in Arts & Entertainment on May 30, 2008 7:52PM

The term 'grunge' always inspires a shudder of self-consciousness in Chicagoist...primarily because when you're a fourteen-year-old eldest child trying to find culture in the void of early-90s Midwestern suburbia, you jump at the first "counter-culture"-ish offering you see. For many it was the commercialized version of the heavy, chugging rock dirge that had been slowly seeping out of the Northwest since the mid-1980s. While pop "remixologist" producer Andy Wallace may have coated Nirvana's Nevermind in an impenetrable shellac of radio-friendly shimmer, many of the bands who made that record's explosion possible continued to toil just under the surface veneer of the grunge phenomenon.

Along with Tacoma's Melvins, it's arguable that one of the most important voices of the early years of the movement belonged to Seattle foursome Mudhoney and unstoppable frontman Mark Arm. [Ed. Note: For the record, we're going to say Mudhoney wins out by a hairsbreadth. Especially since the band's latest album, The Lucky Ones, sounds just as tough as their debut singles.] It's not a stretch to say that most insiders in and around Seattle in the late 1980s felt that Mudhoney's leaden pop scuzz would be the torchbearer of the Northwestern rock scene to the rest of the world, rather than the looser and more metal-leaning Nirvana. "Touch Me I'm Sick," the first single from 1988's iconic Sub Pop release Superfuzz Bigmuff, still crackles with raw, grimey fire and an engulfing, melodic roar. Against the backdrop of the neutered, blip-blop electro-programming that passes for "independent rock" today, the 20th anniversary deluxe edition of Superfuzz sounds even more galvanizing and freshly ferocious than it did two decades ago.

Maybe we shouldn't be so self-conscious after all.

MP3: Mudhoney - Touch Me I'm Sick

Mudhoney plays tonight at Reggie's Rock Club with Easy Action and Fake Fictions, 9:00 p.m., $20

Photo from Flickr by GLK Creative