Cleansing slop rock

The eleventh studio record by Seattle grunge pioneers, Mudhoney, Plastic Eternity suggests they could keep doing this as long as their natural flesh holds up. The stalwart band thrash angrily at life’s evils—corrupt politicians, polluting corporations, internet gatekeepers who neglect art-punk rock royalty—and thrash sweetly at life’s rewards—Pere Ubu, romantic camaraderie, little doggies—because that’s how they feel and this is how they’ll always love to show it. 

Mudhoney commit fully to their scrappy-wacky rock. A style that was conceived as damaged can’t really be worn out. It’s not opera. And they’re certainly not in it for the money. What can the ravages of age do to singer Mark Arm’s moaning and groaning or lead guitarist Steve Turner’s scribbling and scratching? Old trees are the gnarliest. 

The tunes spew with reliable vim and vitriol. As soon as the listener clicks play (Arm, who shifts units in Sub Pop’s warehouse by day, knows new physical albums are mostly doomed to stay in their shrink wrap on collectors’ shelves, silent and pure,) a siren out of Quincy Jones’ “Theme from Ironside” blares over an end times riff. Fast and flailing, it’s Mudhoney alright. They’ve got a few modes that scratch the same itch: paranoid and chanting, loping and beastly, convulsive and stentorian, along the lines of the Fall, Motörhead and Dead Kennedys respectively. Most of all, they channel the freaky feral looseness of their dear Stooges. 

While the music simply offers variations on a classic sound, the oddball language it propels keeps surprising. “Souvenir of My Trip,” a song ambivalent about the traces we leave behind when we die, concretizes this sentiment as “slightly seared lobes and a crispy sensation.” “Almost Everything” compares a certain virus to a Kubrickian star child. “Flush the Fascists” charges, “Scrub your Rembrandt in a Japanese bidet.” (That’ll show ’em?) “Here Comes the Flood” hilariously portrays the proud centaurs who took Ivermectin on the advice of a trickster fox.

On the flip side of their social commentary, there’s an esoteric love ballad (“One or Two”) a heartwarming tribute to Pere Ubu guitarist Tom Herman, calling for him to come out of retirement and save the world (“Tom Herman’s Hermits”) and, as a finale, an ode to those creatures Emily Dickinson called shaggy allies. “Little Dogs” is a mischievous number about the pets whose innocent joy sustains people in these trying times, full of winning lines like this: “Yeah they get wound up, but they’re easy to distract / Just pick ’em up or give ’em a tasty tiny snack.” Irresistible. 

With Plastic Eternity, Mudhoney demonstrate that synthetic perfection isn’t the only sustaining element in the universe. Arm has said, “We like each other and we like being in a band together.” What more does it have to be? Humor, warmth, spirit and the wattage to power a P.A. system are enough to generate timely artistic satisfaction.