Greetings From 1989: New Songs From Mudhoney and J. Mascis’ Witch

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There’s no telling anyone reading this about the glory days of Dinosaur Jr. and Mudhoney if you weren’t there. You probably don’t even care. You were probably too busy fucking with legos and your first Nintendo to have any clue about these two bands who, simultaneously and individually, cracked everyone’s skulls with their own particular brands of neo-psychedelic punk and roll. Now, sure, everyone calls it ‘grunge’ because it demonstrates how lacking of a grasp on the English language you have.

But just so I don’t come off sounding completely high-and-mighty (after all, I was there, I did experience it, and fuck you and your crappy snot-nosed pissant non-commital garbagecore stable of dogshit bands if you don’t like it), I’ll have to acquiesce that I figured both J. Mascis and Mudhoney were done making new music worth hearing. Ok, so I was wrong. Lo and behold, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of beer bottles and cigarette butts, here cometh both Mudhoney and J. Mascis’s latest project, Witch. I’m all for it, every last note of it. Witch’s self-titled debut is awesome pure stoner rock metal of the Black Sabbath-Alice Cooper kind, featuring J. Mascis returning to playing on the drums rather than the guitar. Meanwhile, Seattle’s favorite sons Mudhoney keeps on cranking out psych-rock bearing their own set of howls and growls on Under A Billion Suns. These two records, quite simply, knock your useless appendage of a dick in the dirt right where it belongs.

Maybe we’re not at RCKNDY anymore waiting for the show to start. Maybe we’re not at the Crocodile Cafe smoking weed out of a piece of copper tubing in the bathroom, then shooting an inordinate number of tequilas at the back bar as the band cuts themselves open on stage with a broken beer bottle. Maybe that’s not Mark Lukin and Dan Peters buying beers at the Tiki Lounge inside The Dog House, being carried out at closing time and poured into the back seat of someone’s car. No, it’s not but listening to these records it sure as hell feels like it. I’ll take both of these records, the blood, the broken glass, my memories of those fucked up days and nights along with the image of your stupid face smashed into the windshield and laugh all the way to the next rock show. Thank God — these records fucking own you and nobody cares whether you agree or not so shut up.