Bill's Hyperbolic Music Reviews #10- The Melvins- Ozma

I always liked the idea of early Melvins- the alternating plodding and punky tempos, the constipated vocal caterwauling, the song structures that folded in on themselves in a fucked-up fractal of quirky time signatures, et al.- but, aside from loving the hell out of certain indisputably classic songs ("Eye Flys", for example), I never really got into their first few records to the extent I felt I should have.

That all changed today.

I put the group's sophomore effort Ozma on as I was raking leaves today, and, because raking leaves requires no mental effort whatsoever, I was able to devote more or less my full attention to the songs therein. What I discovered was, I had made a mistake in the way I had listened to this album and their other efforts from this era in the past- I had thrown them on while I was browsing forums and things like that, actions that took my focus away from the music and onto how much I disagreed with Pitchfork's new batch of reviews or whatever. The reason this was a mistake is because these songs are jam-fucking-packed with information. Most of them are really, really short (11 of the 17 are less than 2 minutes long) but there's about 500 different parts crammed into them, and the complexity is compounded by the fact that drummer Dale Crover plays a solid backbeat like 3 times in 35 minutes. So, of course, if you aren't listening closely, this stuff seems to get really samey, really fast. However, if you are, this shit's bananas. It's crazy how many killer riffs guitarist/mastermind Buzz Osborne throws out here, how utterly unique the songs are, how talented the players are, and how weird it is that Shirley Temple's daughter was the band's bassist at the time (well, OK, you don't have to listen closely to know that one) (also, I'm not kidding, look it up). I'll have to go through the catalogue again to see how this and their other early elpees now stack up to me against my old favorites like Lysol, Hostile Ambient Takeover, and (A) Senile Animal, but I have a feeling I'll be ratin' 'em much higher than I useta.

Some highlights include "Oven" (which I saw them perform live- it kicked ass! Also, Helmet later did a cover of it that was really good), "At A Crawl", "Let God Be Your Gardener", and "Ever Since My Accident". Also, they cover a Cars song, and (I think) a KISS song, but they just end up sounding like OK Melvins songs.