Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge

Mudhoney’s second album marks the pinnacle of their early career, the point at which their writhing mud-rock reached a boil before being consumed by the mainstream. The band benefitted from the naturalistic tactics of eccentric Seattle engineer Conrad Uno, who recorded Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge the old-fashioned way — using the analog equipment in his basement studio. While Mudhoney’s sophomore effort got pigeonholed as a ”grunge” exemplar, Fudge is actually an angry garage-rock record in the tradition of mid-‘60s Washington heroes like the Sonics and the Wailers. That lineage comes alive on the boot-stomping rhythms of “Who You Drivin’ Now?,” “Shoot the Moon” and “Don’t Fade IV,” which are at once enraged and overjoyed. While Mudhoney are often pegged as block-fisted lunkheads, “Let It Slide,” “Good Enough” and “Something So Clear” generate a complex sonic vortex — an ugly psychedelic bliss that is fuelled by the circular drum patterns of Dan Peter and the tribal bass stylings of Matt Lukin. Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge is simply too much fun to be ghettoized as grunge.