Scud Mountain Boys - Disc of the day

Scud Mountain Boys
Massachusetts

(Sub Pop, 1996)

Giving lowlife, alt.country dirges a good name, pre-Pernice Brothers

Reflecting July’s MOJO cover story, this week is Sub Pop week on MOJO, and every Disc Of The Day will be a release from the 20-year-old label.

“I would give anything to make it with you one more time,” sounds not unlike an Eagles lyric, and Joe Pernice’s delivery – all numb detachment and occasional raised eyebrow – is a handsome relative of Don Henley’s phlegmier croon. But the song is called Grudge **** (their asterisks), and therein lies the difference: Scud Mountain Boys majored in parlaying The Eagles’ implied ennui into full-on jaundice. In other respects, this quiet, slender, pedal steel-embroidered Pioneer Valley quartet defied comparison, even with alterna-cowpoke contemporaries like Lambchop and Wilco, who rattled past them on the ’90s alt.country bandwagon, leaving SMB to stew in their defiantly unalloyed slowness (only the Johnny Cash-like Cigarette Sandwich quickens the step) and among the grim, stymied lives they sang of (Massachusetts’ first words are “They pulled her from a ditch Somewhere down on 95… Found a needle and a pipe / she had hidden by her side”). But that makes SMB sound a bore, and they weren’t, with irresistible chord changes, a welcoming rehearsal-room intimacy, and great songs like the swooping and slyly metaphor-laden Knievel (“I’ve got a bone in need of breaking”). In 1997, Pernice carried all that good stuff over into his Pernice Brothers incarnation, with sprightlier Beatles/Byrds beat pop replacing booze-spangled C&W as his stylistic canon. But this is where it all began…

Danny Eccleston

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 02/07/2008

Further Listening

Eagles – Eagles (Asylum, 1972)

Pernice Brothers – Overcome By Happiness (Ryko, 1997)

Lambchop – How I Quit Smoking (Merge, 1996)

What’s YOUR favourite Sub Pop album? Enlighten us below...

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Wonderful album. timeless and essential.¡The voice of Joe Pernice is smoky and heartbreaking! And the songs very very emotional.

Posted by carneham at 7:12 PM GMT 02/07/2008 Report Abuse

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