Mudhoney: SWG3, Glasgow – live review

Mudhoney
SWG3, Glasgow
8th September 2022

Seattle’s original grunge pioneers make a triumphant return to Scotland with a stunning display of raw garage-rock power and politicised punk catharsis.

Who remembers Mudhoney, the super-smart class jokers who launched the nascent late-’80s grunge scene with their incendiary debut single, Touch Me I’m Sick?  If this well-attended show in a former industrial site in Glasgow is anything to go by, a surprising number of clued-up young music fans do, in addition to the expected 50-somethings. Looking ’round the venue, perhaps as much as a third of the audience probably hadn’t been born at the time the Seattle group’s epochal Superfuzz Bigmuff EP dropped on an unsuspecting UK music scene in 1988 and the energised quartet came dangerously close to blowing Sonic Youth off the stage at the very apex of the New York avant-rockers’ power.

The build-up to Mudhoney’s headlining set hadn’t been promising. SWG3’s awkward location at the end of a road next to a railway line has never been particularly welcoming, and unfortunately, the bar hasn’t improved much over time, still serving up a consistently mediocre selection of beers. The more serious problem with the venue, though, was made apparent when the support act Large Plants took to the stage. The group’s recordings to date have been very promising, showcasing a pleasingly raw form of garage-folk with a dash of psychedelia. Tragically, the sound at SWG3 rendered the band’s performance almost unlistenable. From my habitual spot next to the mixing desk, the sound was very muffled, with very loud bass and drums effectively drowning out the vocals and twin guitars. After consulting with the soundman, a relocation to closer to the front of the stage improved matters somewhat.

Large Plants were then revealed as sounding something like Tim Buckley backed by The MC5 – a pretty great concept! With appealing folk-influenced vocals that also evoked Chicago’s idiosyncratic psych-folkies HP Lovecraft in places, Large Plants are definitely ones to watch – and hopefully hear – in more sympathetic surroundings.

Following a cool warm-up playlist of classic Brit post-punk: Magazine, Gang of Four, etc – Mudhoney took to the stage to a boisterous welcome. Frontman Mark Arm looked momentarily taken back, responding with a bemused “We haven’t done anything yet, but thank you anyway!” before the group launched into the slow-motion landslide of Mudride from Superfuzz Bigmuff. It was a stroke of genius as the set opener, setting the tone for a killer set-list that plucked some unexpected deep cuts from the veteran group’s lengthy back catalogue. Still long-haired and ’70s-skinny,  the most remarkable thing about the wry frontman was his undiminished vocal prowess, at 60 years of age.

The angular art-punk of Nerve Attack from 2018’s superb Digital Garbage followed, bringing to mind cult proto-punks Rocket From The Tombs, before Inside Job introduced a high tempo garage-blues shuffle that threw petrol on the already highly-combustible mosh-pit that had formed to the right of the stage. With a much better sound mix than Large Plants had enjoyed, the Seattle group sounded great, even if the venue’s acoustics compromised the clarity somewhat.

Mudhoney cranked up the intensity with their much-loved 1992 single Suck You Dry, followed by the irresistible Blue Cheer-style guitars of Hey Neanderfuck, Arm’s bracingly caustic commentary on former US President Donald Trump’s much-discussed support base. The song showcased all the key Mudhoney traits – a limber, swinging rhythm section that rolls as hards as it rocks, Arm and Steve Turner’s intertwining guitars and Arm’s witty and well-observed lyrics, delivered with appropriate venom in an Iggy-esque sardonic croon.

By this point, the audience was thoroughly warmed-up, and wild dancing broke out as the group snapped into Good Enough, Mudhoney’s bizarre take on a commercial hit song, sounding as it does more akin to Randy Alvey & the Green Fuz covering The Shaggs, or possibly vice versa. Either way, the 1991 single from Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge cranked the intensity up a notch before This Gift again show-cased Arm’s astonishing vocals. The Beefheart-flavoured Judgement, Rage, Retribution and Thyme was then followed by a rapturously received Touch Me I’m Sick, causing even some of the older audience members to drop their inhibitions and join in the ecstatic dancing down the front. SWG3 staff were quick to pass out plastic cups of water, continuing to do so for the remainder of the show. A nice touch, and one much appreciated by the overheating dancers.

With the audience in the palm of their hands, Mudhoney then essayed a new song, the splendidly titled Tom Herman’s Hermits. Presumably referencing the former Pere Ubu guitarist and punning on the ’60s Manchester beat group, the song pleasingly harked back to the dark intensity of the group’s oft-overlooked 1998 masterpiece, Tomorrow Hit Today, their parting shot on a major label. Arm was clearly moved by the audience’s enthusiastic response to the new song, declaring that it was the first time they had ever performed it live, and referring to the pandemic-related difficulties of the last two years. The frontman also revealed that the group’s recently completed new album would be released in April 2023, prompting more enthusiastic cheers from the fired-up Glaswegian audience (you can read more about the new album in Louder Than War’s recent interview with Mark Arm).

Mudhoney cranked up the velocity again with a thrilling trio of songs, starting with Get Into Yours, followed by an unhinged tilt at Prosperity Gospel, one of Arm’s most pointed polemics from Digital Garbage, the political theme continuing with the very welcome (and sadly unsurprising) return of the bitterly trenchant Fearless Doctor Killers (FDK) from 1995’s My Brother The Cow. There must have been a sense of exasperation in the Mudhoney camp that a song about violent anti-abortionists murdering healthcare workers would be even more relevant now, 27 years after it was first recorded. To leaven the weighty themes of the two proceeding songs, the escapist Oh Yeah followed, with Arm declaring “I wanna get in the ocean and clear my mind”.

There was no doubt by this point that the group haven’t mellowed their political sensibilities since the fall of the (allegedly) treasonous 45th POTUS, and indeed the closing run of songs found Arm channelling the politicised fury of ’80s US hardcore as he ditched his trusty Gretsch guitar and prowled the front of the stage, displaying the formative influences of Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper and Jello Biafra. Although most commonly thought of as one-half of a high-energy guitar partnership with the original nerd-punk guitar god, Steve Turner, Arm excelled in his unencumbered frontman role, powering through the future-forward I’m Now, the redneck-baiting Paranoid Core and – most intense of all – the singer’s full-on diatribe against a certain, once-ubiquitous white wine on Chardonnay, the latter set up by some amusing comic banter between Arm and Turner.

The closing two numbers, 21st Century Pharisees and One Bad Actor (from 2019’s Morning in America) found the band deep into late-period Black Flag territory and at their most uncompromising lyrically.  Mark Arm’s vocal performance throughout the set had been jaw-dropping; perhaps due to some genetic inheritance from his aspirant opera-singer mother, the skinny surfer-punk frontman is blessed with one of the great rock voices, which astonishingly has not withered one iota despite the ravages of time. But Mudhoney were not done yet; the raucous audience called them back on stage for a well-deserved encore and Seattle’s quintessential grunge band duly obliged, raising the intensity to another level again with a stunning four-song sequence of Into The Drink, In ‘n’ Out of Grace, The Farther I Go and a riotous Here Comes Sickness, powered by Dan Peters’ jaw-dropping drumming and Guy Maddison’s powerfully sinuous and melodic basslines.

Is it too much to hope that Mudhoney will return to the UK to tour their new album next year? If they do, don’t miss them – on this form, they’re untouchable.

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Mudhoney are on Facebook, Twitter and the web

Large Plants are on Facebook, Twitter and Bandcamp.

All words by Gus Ironside, 2022.

Photos © Paul Grace – websites are www.paulgrace-eventphotos.co.uk & www.pgrace.co.uk

Source: louderthanwar.com