Photo: Adrian Cross
They’ve been sandblasting their combination of grunge and punk since the late 80s and Mudhoney still give no quarter in this age of decorum in the concert hall, as they play like wasps possessed (and ones with the eggs of some other fiend laid in their brains too). The 02 Islington is a million miles from its soulless counterpart in Greenwich and specialises in this form of fizzing, raw experience.
Now ten albums to the good, the Seattle grunge pioneers, who never reached the critical nirvana of those who cited their influence , dip into their reservoir of crowd pleasing favourites; ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’, ‘What To Do With The Neutral’ , ‘Sweet Thing You Ain’t Sweet No More’ all get an outing. It’s not always pretty, especially the garbled rendition of Roxy Music’s ‘Editions Of You’, but its mightily effective. Their songs are either textbook grunge, slowly developing to a frenzied chorus, or the musical jump cuts typical of punk. Suitably Mark Arm’s vocals veer between a Cobain-like drawl and a hoarse bellow and he even manages to sound like Mark E Smith on ‘I Like It Small’. Each song ends with the lights thrown on like the sudden detonation of an atom bomb irradiating the forest of hands in front of them.
There’s no going gently into the night with the middle aged audience either. Beer regularly spritzes the air and, against the stage blackcloth, is like the sudden creation of a galaxy. There’s a steady stream of flailing insects passed over the heads in the slam pit. As one surfer is carried away Mark quips “Oh fuck. Brexit!” Then, amidst the zeitgeisty confusion, a French flag appears and reads ‘We come in peace’.
Physically the guys are in great shape and, Roxy apart, so is their musicianship. Guy Maddison’s bass is a convoy of juggernauts rolling through town, Steve Turner’s reverb superb and Dan Peter‘s drumming ferocious: all coming together thrillingly on the final encore ‘In And Out Of Grace.’ The band departs with a word of surfing advice. “In a tug-of-war with the bouncer you gotta go that a-way,” says Arm pointing to the back. Mudhoney don’t face forward, but they make it a whole lot of fun venturing back.
