Now I know why you've been shaking Now I know why you've been shaking Now I know why you've been shaking NOW I KNOW WHY YOU'VE BEEN SHAKING! (Slaves And Bulldozers)
Here’s a classic I don’t play very often at all, Soundgarden Badmotorfinger. Sitting here, gently headbanging away on occasion I was trying to work out why.
The songs are great, the performances are outta sight, the production is brilliant, the artwork features a spark plug* and I just love the album name. It is Soundgarden’s best LP by far, their later stuff mostly bores me limp. So why do I not give Badmotorfinger the airtime it merits?
I think it suffers from two things, excessive length** and a perception from me of a certain sludginess, bordering on monolithic. On one I’m right, 57 minutes is too long^ is too much^^ but on the other I am utterly wrong. Listening to Badmotorfinger now I am struck by nothing as much as how fleet-footed and dextrous the rhythm section are; forget Yes or Gentle Giant if you want three time changes per song and switches into 7/4 time then look no further than Soundgarden.
Chastened, I spin the black circle.
The singles ‘Rusty Cage’ and ‘Jesus Christ Pose’ stand tall in my memories from ’91-’92 and bloody rightly so, they are both real grunge metal bangers; Soundgarden being the band from the whole grunge scene who sounded the most metal by far. Both are brilliant, Cornell’s vocal heroics on the former are just beaten by the all-round rhythmic perfection on the latter, plus one ‘king cool song title.
But^* Badmotorfinger‘s real treasures lie elsewhere for me. It’s liable to change but today’s favourites are the pairing of ‘Outshined’ and ‘Slaves And Bulldozers’. There’s a real slinky intent to ‘Outshined’, a little sexy menace in the groove that was missing from Seattle back in ’91, when teamed with a towering performance from Cornell and a real seething heaviness, it just wins, especially when he doles out the line ‘I’m looking California, feeling Minnesota’, I love it.
As for the latter, I love a bit of S&B, Soundgarden really summon up an incredibly heavy psych sound here, dialling it back to elements of Louder Than Love but with a more confident, harder and more burnished production, pushing the mysticismometer into the red. Both tracks are galactically great.
The comparatively lightweight, in this company at least, but entertaining ‘Face Pollution’ and ‘Somewhere’ round off the first side without troubling the Watcher much. But, irritating narration-intro aside, ‘Searching With My Good Eye Closed’ is a real astral head fuck, epic in scale and brilliantly played, with a great tune to boot. ‘Room A Thousand Years Wide’ is even better, featuring one of Kim Thayil’s masterful riffs levering open the whole cosmos for us to toy with.
If I had my evil way ‘Mind Riot’ would close the LP, I like the weaponised Jane’s Addiction vibe of it. Taking the three final tracks off the album would slash 12 minutes off the running time and whilst there is nothing bad there, you wouldn’t be removing any supporting walls.
The playing on Badmotorfinger is absolutely off the scale, Matt Cameron is one of my favourite drummers, Ben Shepherd’s bass drives these tunes and Thayil, much as he does get lauded, is still a ridiculously underrated player, so expressive and unshowy. Oh, the rhythm guitarist guy can sing a bit too.
As I mentioned before the rhythm section here really duck and dive, taking the songs off on unexpected tangents and stopping anything being too linear and straightforward. Its clever and it keeps everything fresh.
It isn’t an original point of mine but unlike most metal or rock at the time Badmotorfinger doesn’t channel anger and frustration to hit out at targets*^, as much as turning it inwards. There aren’t any quick fixes Soundgarden show us, mend or at least know yourself first.
Badmotorfinger was released around the same time as Nevermind and Ten, which was some pretty heavyweight competition. To my mind it stands very much by itself, hewn from the living rock, but not totally of it either. This LP is very definitely worth your time, maybe not quite 57 minutes of it, but hey that’s what the tone arm lifter is for.
And there’s a spark plug on the cover.
1111 Down.
*always loved their shape. True story.
**sympathies, from a fellow sufferer.
^I blame CDs for that 90’s bloat.
^^I mean, I love Battenberg but I’d struggle to eat it for 57 minutes, straight. Word up.
^*never start a sentence with ‘but’.
^^^as a Welshman I immediately translate that into ‘Looking Carmarthen, feeling MIlford Haven’.
*^with the exception of ‘Holy Water’.
