Under A Billion Suns

So, I've been a fan of Seattle band Mudhoney since around the early-90s days of Seattle's (and more to the point, Sub-Pop's) dominance of the music scene. When I heard recently they had a new album out, I picked it up immediately, knowing it would be good.



But I didn't expect it to be SO DAMN GREAT. More, plus some songs, in the complete post.

Mudhoney always showed more of a garage-rock, fuzzed-out attitude than their heavy-metal-lovin' peers in bands like Soundgarden and Nirvana. Under A Billion Suns sounds like it should have been released in 1966 instead of 2006... loud, sloppy, but still intricate, this is punk in the Stooges/MC5 vein. And, it fuckin' ROCKS. This is my favorite album of the year so far (and since the Belle & Sebastian one is so good, that's saying a lot).

Check these out:

Where Is The Future?, in which singer Mark Arm wonders why all those Cold War-era dreams of flying cars and floating cities didn't happen.

Endless Yesterday, which is longing over either a love affair that bombed, or a nuclear bomb that dropped, or both.

Hard-On For War, because as that line in the movie Toys put it, "War is the domain of the small penis."