Mudhoney: Since We've Become Translucent : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Who would dare to kick off a set of slam-bang garage rock with an eight-minute psychedelic dirge? The Seattle misanthropes of Mudhoney would, that's who. The band sounds as dense and murky as ever, although it has added a few free-jazz strokes on some tracks. When Mudhoney aren't spewing about "the seeds of discontentment," in "The Straight Life," they're dragging a Muscle Shoals-style horn section through the Detroit-punk sewers on the blazing "Take It Like a Man." Even that psychedelic dirge is a hypnotic charmer. Will these Northwest-rock pioneers ever get the props they deserve? Probably not. They'll just keep coming back with more of the same menacing sludge metal that they were making back when Kurt Cobain still lived under a bridge.

MARK KEMP
(RS 905 - Sept. 19, 2002)