What Moves The Heart? A Quick Review Of The New Mudhoney Box From Cherry Red Records

The story of Mudhoney is an illustrative one. Having helped to build the legend of Sub Pop Records, the Seattle band sought bigger pastures by signing to Reprise. This was in the era when the majors were eager to sign underground and indie acts in the aftermath of Nirvana's success. And in the wake of the labels having too many bands like Mudhoney and little idea of what to do with them, the fellows went back to Sub Pop. By this time, Sub Pop had diversified its approach thanks to the success of non-grunge bands on its roster like Velocity Girl. And in those years on a major, Mudhoney made some interesting records, some indulgent ones, and worked real hard to up-end anyone's expectations of what this sort of stuff was supposed to sound like. Thankfully, Cherry Red Records have collected all those Mudhoney major label releases on a new set called Real Low Vibe: The Reprise Recordings 1992-1998.

Opening with 1992's Piece of Cake we hear a record that's itself a document of an era. This is what the sound of a big company trying to figure out what the cool kids listen to sounds like. "Suck You Dry" and the fuzzy "Blinding Son" seem the highlights here still, with the rest of the record seeing the band indulge in their brand of grunge which seems to owe as much to acid rock as anything else. Nothing here seems particularly concise, but Mark Arm leads the players through their paces with gusto, such that there's real force here behind "Make It Now" and other ragers here, even amid some real filler.

1996's "My Brother The Cow" remains the finest record here on this set, combining a ranging experimentation within the confines of the grunge form. "Generation Spokesmodel" is a slacker anthem taken apart and shoved together again, while the chugging "What Moves The Heart?" is a worthy approximation of "Real Good Time"-era Stooges. Mudhoney never had the innate menace of Iggy and the boys but they at least committed to this stuff with real vigor. Sure, lots of this is wildly indulgent and downright silly, but the parts that hit hard, like "Execution Style", still rock mightily. A nice production job by the legendary Jack Endino on this one renders My Brother The Cow a semi-classic within a subset of Nineties alt-rock.

Tomorrow Hit Today dropped in 1998. By then, grunge was virtually a nostalgic concept, and even Britpop was starting to lose its flavor. American indie was a mixed bag and in the midst of that Mudhoney hooked up with Jim Dickinson (famed Replacements and Big Star producer) for this one. The album has a remarkably clean mix, such that "Poisoned Water" and other numbers here almost sound like Aerosmith cuts. That's not a knock on Dickinson's skills but a comment on how out-of-place this record sounded in 1998. Heck, one of the highlights is a rough run at "Editions of You" by Roxy Music! Still, for a release that would be the band's last on Reprise, Tomorrow Hit Today is a decent offering, with the spry "Night of the Haunted" being a real jam, and "Real Low Vibe" revealing just how dangerously close to being The Doors, only the drunk Jim-Doors, Mudhoney were in 1998. This is music that, even in that year, was dangerously past its sell-by date. And still, Dickinson's work on this record renders it a bit sharper than I'd remembered. At least in spots.

Real Low Vibe: The Reprise Recordings 1992-1998 serves up another portion of the set with the promotional CD On Tour Now as the fourth disc of this stuffed set. The live album, centered around songs from the Reprise records, is a decent reminder that for a grunge band, Mudhoney were remarkably tight, rarely letting their own worst tendencies take up too much time from the real meat of the songs here. "Suck You Dry" and "What Moves The Heart?" are the highlights here, with the rest of the selections making up a time capsule of what American alt-rock was in the Clinton years.

There's likely nothing on the Reprise albums from Mudhoney that will charm or please as much as anything this band did on Sub Pop in their formative years. That said, it's worth hearing all of this again, and recalling another era when a band as decidedly un-marketable as Mudhoney got money to sign to a huge label. I'm not sure what Reprise thought they were getting, as Mark Arm was never going to be the next Cobain, but at least they put some push behind the material of these grunge legends. Real Low Vibe: The Reprise Recordings 1992-1999 offers up these records, along with a live disc and loads of bonus tracks, in a fine fashion. And a listener should be happy to re-live those years when the bands that fueled our youth suddenly became (almost) mainstream. Well, almost.

Real Low Vibe: The Reprise Recordings 1992-1998 by Mudhoney is out now via Cherry Red Records.