We had a blast with Guy and Steve from the band Mudhoney talking music right before their soundcheck at The Rickshaw for Westward 2018 Festival. The two gave us an excellent selection of albums to check out! Mudhoney will release their new full-length Digital Garbage on September 28th via Sub Pop Records.

Mudhoney on Records In My Life references the following albums:

Mudhoney – Digital Garbage
Devo – Q: Are We Not Men?
The Clash – The Clash
Sex Pistols – Never Mind the Bollocks
Dead Kennedys – Fresh Fruit For Rotting Fruit
Black Fag – Nervous Breakdown
Goat – Commune
clipping. – Splender & Misery
Hot Snakes – Jerico Sirens
Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
The Stooges – The Stooges
Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath
The Clash – London Calling
Fripp & Eno – (No Pussyfooting)
The Dead Boys – Young Loud and Snotty
The Damned – Damned Damned Damned
Ramones – Ramones
Spacemen 3 – The Perfect Perscription

On Digital Garbage
Courtesy of Sub Pop Rcords

Since the late ’80s, Mudhoney – the Seattle-based foursome whose muck-crusted version of rock, shot through with caustic wit and battened down by a ferocious low end – has been a high-pH tonic against the ludicrous and the insipid.

Thirty years later, the world is experiencing a particularly high-water moment for both those ideals. But just in time, vocalist Mark Arm, guitarist Steve Turner, bassist Guy Maddison, and drummer Dan Peters are back with Digital Garbage, a barbed-wire-trimmed collection of sonic brickbats. Arm’s raw yawp and his bandmates’ long-honed chemistry make Digital Garbage an ideal release valve for the 2018 pressure cooker. “My sense of humor is dark, and these are dark times,” says Arm. “I suppose it’s only getting darker.”

Digital Garbage opens with the swaggering “Nerve Attack,” which can be heard as a nod both to modern-life anxiety and the ever-increasing threat of warfare. The album’s title comes from the outro of “Kill Yourself Live,” which segues from a revved-up Arm organ solo into a bleak look at the way notoriety goes viral. Arm says: “people really seem to find validation in the likes—and then there’s Facebook Live, where people have streamed torture and murder, or, in the case of Philando Castile, getting murdered by a cop. In the course of writing that song, I thought about how, once you put something out there online, you can’t wipe it away. It’s always going to be there—even if no one digs it up, it’s still out there floating somewhere.”

Appropriately enough, bits of recent news events float through the record: “Please Mr. Gunman,” on which Arm bellows “We’d rather die in church!” over his bandmates’ careening charge, was inspired by a TV-news bubblehead’s response to a 2017 church shooting, while the ominous refrain that opens the submerged-blues of “Next Mass Extinction” calls back to last summer’s clashes in Charlottesville.

Mudhoney’s core sound—steadily pounding drums, swamp-thing bass, squalling guitar wobble, Arm’s hazardous-chemical voice—remains on Digital Garbage, which the band recorded with longtime collaborator (and Digital Garbage pianist) Johnny Sangster at the Seattle studio Litho. The anti-religiosity shimmy “21st Century Pharisees” builds its case with Maddison’s woozy synths, which Arm says “add a really nice touch to the proceedings.” Digital Garbage closes with “Oh Yeah,” a brief celebration of skateboarding, surfing, biking, and the joy provided by these escape valves. “I would’ve really just loved to write songs about just hanging out on the beach, and going on a nice vacation,” says Arm. “But, you know, that probably doesn’t make for great rock.”

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