SOUNDTRACK: PRIMUS-Antipop (1999).
This was
the final album that Primus made before going on hiatus (ostensibly breaking up, but they did reunite a few years later). I have distinct memories of buying this album and listening to it on the way home in the car. I remember liking the songs but having the very distinct feeling that it didn’t really sound anything like Primus. And that is still the case.
This album has a whole mess of guest producers and guitarists and critics seem to think that every song feels very different. But I disagree. It feels like a very heavy Les Claypool solo project.
About the album Claypool has said: “Antipop was the most difficult record we ever made, because there was a lot of tension between the three of us, and there was some doubt at the label as to whether we knew what the hell we were doing anymore… Primus sort of imploded.” In the Primus book, Larry says that a few times he wondered why he was even there since there were so many other guitarists. I noted that even though there were other guitarists, there were no extra bassists or drummers present, which is kind of shitty.
Producers include Fred Durst (!), Jim Martin (from Faith No More), Stewart Copeland (!), Matt Stone (!) and Tom Morello (from Rage Against the Machine) and Tom Waits.
Tom Morello features quite prominently on the disc, producing and playing on 3 tracks. And on the songs he’s on, I feel like you can’t even hear Larry (if he’s on them at all). Morello gets co-writing credit on the songs too, and they feel more like Rage songs than Primus songs–they are very heavy and very metal. “Electric Uncle Sam” is certainly catchy and rocking. I rather like it although it feels far more Morello than Claypool. “Mama Didn’t Raise No Fool” also sounds quite Rage like to me. There’s certainly Primus elements, but it feels very conventional–it’s again very aggressive with no sign or Ler. “Power Mad” is Morello’s third song. It’s the least interesting song on the disc.
Matt Stone from South Park produced “Natural Joe.” It feels quite like Primus–a bit heavier, perhaps tahn usual and with that now ever present slap bass. The “son of a bitch-a” line seems like it might have had a Matt Stone influence.
Fred Durst produced “Lacquer Head” the album’s only single. It is really catchy. Durst says it was his idea for Primus to get more heavy (like in the old days) but this is much heavier than anything they had done. I have to think that the “Keep on sniffing” section was Durst-influenced as it sounds kind of rap-metally.
“Dirty Drowning Man” was produced by Stewart Copeland and features Martina Topley-Bird on backing vocals. The opening sounds very Primus, but the chorus is very conventional. Martina barely registers on backing vocals, which is a shame.
Songs credited to just Primus are “The Antipop” which is also quite heavy and strangely catchy given the sentiments. Perhaps the most unusual track on the disc is the 8 minute “Eclectic Electric” which has three parts. The first is slow and quieter with a catchy/creepy verse. Part 2 is much heavier, while Part 3 revisits part 1. I do rather like it. James Hetfield plays on it although I can’t tell where. “Greet the Sacred Cow” has a funk bass part and a real Primus vibe. It’s a quite a good song. “The Ballad of Bodacious” seems like a Primus cover band from music to concept. The final song they did was “The Final Voyage of the Liquid Sky.” I love the crazy watery bass that opens the song. The verses also have a real Primus feel. And those choruses are unreasonably catchy.
The final song was produced by Tom Waits. It doesn’t sound like Primus at all. Rather, it sounds like a big ol’ sea shanty A perfect Tom Waits-ian song. And it’s a really good song too. You can definitely feel the Primus vibe though, even if it doesn’t really sound like a Primus song exactly.
There’s a bonus track, which is a cover of their song “The Heckler” from Suck on This. This version is good (although not quite as good as the original version). But it shows how far removed the new stuff is from their earliest recordings. This also means that “Jellikit” is the only song from Suck that has not been played on another record.
So while I can see that many fans of Primus would hate this album, fans of heavy rock from the era should certainly check it out. Les’ voice is heavier, more metal, and the guitars are pretty conventional. And I still think there are some good songs here.
[READ: January 16, 2015] “The Empties”
This story is set after the end times (which happened in August 2015). I enjoyed that in the story two characters argue over whether they are living in dystopian or postapocalyptic time. The one guy argues that “dystopia means an imaginary place where everything’s exactly wrong and what we’re living in is a postapocalyptic prelapsarian kind of thing.” Our narrator says they are both wrong because those two words pertain to stories and this is real life.
It has been two years since E.T. (End Times). Very few people still bother to charge anything on the extant towers. And most of the weak died in the first winter. Our survivors are in Vermont which has brutal winters but also have wood burning stoves which she imagines many city folk do not have.
Our narrator has been writing in a journal that she received B.E.T. (Before End Times) and then one day she decides to go to the library (the only building still with a lock) to see if she can use the type writer to write a history of their lives since E.T. began. The “librarian” is heavily armed and is frisking everyone who leaves–books are valuable commodity. She says they don’t have any paper but that she is welcome to use the reverse side of her own novel (Shroud of the Hills by Matilda Barnstone copyright 2003) which she sent out to many places but never got a response. (more…)
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SOUNDTRACK: OYSTERHEAD-The Grand Pecking Order (2001).
This is a really fun album. Despite the three big personalities here–Trey Anastasio, Steward Copeland, Les Claypool, they work so well together. Some songs feel like Phish songs (Trey has a song or two that is just him), some feel like Les songs (ditto for Claypool), but you never feel like they are trying to outdo each other. And of course Stewart Copeland plays his great drums all the way through.
