Under ReviewMudhoney
Superfuzz Bigmuff: Deluxe Ediition
Sub Pop (773)
Grade: ****

The Lucky Ones
Sub Pop (765)
Grade: ***

Mudhoney’s theme song could easily be “I’m Still Standing.”

Part of the second wave of Seattle grunge bands that signed to a major label (Reprise, in their case), Mudhoney only managed to land one album in the Top 200, and were ultimately dropped. But, while more successful acts like Soundgarden and Alice In Chains eventually folded, Mudhoney found a home waiting for them back at Sub Pop, and the band shows no signs of giving up the ghost yet (though original bassist Matt Lukin was replaced by Guy Maddison in 2002).

Superfuzz Bigmuff started out as a six-track EP. The first CD version added six singles/compilation tracks. This deluxe edition adds a few demos and a second disc with two previously unreleased performances from 1988. The opening riff of the band’s trademark song, “Touch Me I’m Sick,” still packs a punch, ranking up there with similar openings by other Pacific Northwest acts, like the Sonics’ “The Witch,” Heart’s “Barracuda,” and, three years after “Touch Me” first appeared, Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

Unfortunately there’s no demo for that track, but there are demos for “Need,” “Mudride” and “In ’n’ Out of Grace,” which are fairly similar to the released versions, showing that the group had a clear idea of where a song should go from the beginning.

But as the second disc shows, Mudhoney was always a band better experienced live.

“We’re from America! Howdy!” lead singer Mark Arm chirps at the start of an Oct. 10, 1988, show in Berlin on the band’s first European tour, a friendly intro to what proves to be a sizzling set. A Mudhoney show was always as much about the performance (which could see the entire audience invading the stage, completely obscuring the band) as the songs, and in the group’s first flush of extensive touring (the second show is a short set from Santa Barbara on Nov. 16, 1988), even without visuals, the band’s enthusiasm is both obvious and infectious.

Twenty years later, The Lucky Ones offers a clear illustration that the band thankfully hasn’t mellowed with age. Arm still has one of the most distinctive voices in rock, a yowl that’s both over the top and deadly serious (just listen to “Tales Of Terror”). If you pay attention to the lyrics, you’ll find the songs are also on the more serious side. Some might even say bleak; the opening track, “I’m Now” has the chorus “The past made no sense/The future looks tense” into which you can read any number of portents of doom, while the title track gloomily concludes “The lucky ones/are lucky they’re not around.”

And for anyone who thinks grunge is “so 1990,” this album proves there’s always room in rock ’n’ roll for distorted guitars. Mudhoney remain the standard bearers of grunge, and they’re just as much fun to listen to now as they were then.