Silverfish
Monday, March 23rd, 2009Silverfish EP
Wiija Records, 1989
My last post about PRE reminded me of another brash British band fronted by a ferocious foreign female: the almighty obscenity-laced, tinnitus-enducing Silverfish. Legend has is that the UK-based band found their American screamer Lesley Rankine kicking the shit out of someone backstage at a punk show and knew instantly they’d found someone fierce enough to wail over their massively overamped racket. Released at the dawn of what would soon be known as the “grunge” era, alongside other noisy, thick-necked punk from Seattle from the likes of Mudhoney, Tad, and the Melvins, Silverfish approached music as a volume war with guitars hopelessly fuzzed out and distorted, with a rhythm section that added to the din, just barely forming the mess into songs. This debut 4-song EP kicks off with one of the most hilarious/righteously punk lead ins you’ll ever hear, as a sample of Dolly Parton singing “Jolene” gets interrupted by Rankine screeching “MOTHER FUCKER!” It’s a totally amazing and appropriate way to start this beast of a record. And it still makes me smile any time I hear it. Russ Meyer‘s Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill! even gets sampled, so you really know what wild ass angle they’re coming from. Touch and Go Records saw the light and reissued this record with 4 more songs as the Cockeye LP in 1990. I don’t know if I have a bad pressing or if the T&G version was remastered, but I’ve always preferred the mix on this EP as it’s so grotesquely trebly and in the red — a sound that’s become rather commonplace nowadays, but in 1989 it was unconventionally harsh, even for a band wading around the grunge pool.
DOWNLOAD:
Silverfish – “Dolly Parton”
Silverfish – “On The Motorway”
Silverfish – “Dont Fuck”
Silverfish – “Weird Shit”
LINKS:
Yikes! It’s been over a month since my last post, which sort of fits today’s post, “Epic Fits” by the UK uber spazzpunks PRE. I’d nabbed a few tracks (see below) from the Skin Graft website and thought about picking up the album for quite some time, but sort of wrote ’em off as covering the same ground as other high-tension no wave spazzoids like Melt-Banana, Dmonstrations, and Xerobot. And while they’re definitely in the same league, PRE has their own chops and more wound up energy than they seem to know what to do with, pushing each jabbing guitar burst and shriek past any sensible limit, skillfully crafting a sonic intensity that’s comparable to electrocution. It’s ridiculously confrontational, yet ridiculously fun too with unexpected twists and turns, like the extended lock groove that takes over “Scenes from A 1963 Los Angeles Love In,” stamping the riff into the ground relentlessly before it stops on a dime and snaps back to form. Then there’s the noisy, horn-assisted leitmotif of “Popping Showers” which keeps the track interesting as it sprawls: it’s the second song on the album to hover around the 4-minute mark, which is an epic amount of time for such an overamped genre. The title fits perfectly. Anyway, I’m kicking myself for not getting around to buying “Epic Fits” until now and for letting this blog go without a posting for so long. I’m anxious to redeem myself by jumping on their upcoming “Hope Freaks” album when it’s released this summer, and by kickin’ the NFZ postings into high gear in the next few weeks…