For an outfit approaching its three-decade mark, the Melvins surely don't slow down or straighten up. To wit, next month they'll launch a 51-day, 50-state-and-D.C. American run with the express aim of earning a spot in Guinness World Records for the fastest nationwide tour. In the past six years, they've released three LPs, splits with Isis, Unsane, and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, a few live albums, and a box set, just to sample. They've gigged relentlessly, too, touring as a two-drummer quartet that's incorporated both halves of Big Business for some of their most charged sets and records in years. Freak Puke, the band's latest LP, offers another Melvins shift that's obvious insofar as much as it's unpredictable, another (temporary) lineup shift for the stably unstable Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover and, really, another good ol' Melvins stunt. Under the name "Melvins Lite," Freak Puke pulls away the younger half of the band and adds double bassist Trevor Dunn, the far-flung collaborator and Mr. Bungle member who has previously joined Osborne in Fantômas. They cover Macca, improvise, and turn plenty-weird songs into still-weirder jams, creating a 42-minute funhouse of horror and delight.
Melvins Lite is certainly an interesting attempt to push a consistently restless crew toward new textures. There are moments here that, even within the sprawling Melvins oeuvre, seem nebulous. On the short "Inner Ear Rupture", for instance, the trio segues from amp-and-drum cycles to growling, non-linear exploration. For 10-minute closer "Tommy Goes Berserk", they take the alternate approach, climbing from the lounge skitter of three creeping psyschos to the shrieking bombast of a power trio of psych rockers. "Worm Farm Waltz" offers a prototypical mid-tempo Melvins march, a sharp riff coiled beneath growled verses. But after about 90 seconds, the song gets progressively stranger, flipping from a bowed-bass march to a paranoid sing-along to, at its end, a snarling mess of Elliott Carter-like grate and ruin.
Despite the personnel shift, Freak Puke isn't some anomalous tangent, as it often sounds like exactly what it is: beastly Melvins songs with a surprising fold between Crover's drums and Osborne's guitar. During some of the more vicious, viscous numbers, Dunn's sharp tone and defined upright hooks provide a counterintuitive contrast for the rock numbers. When they cover Wings' "Let Me Roll It", for instance, Osborne lets that trademark riff languish above noise and bulbous bass, the itinerant Melvins crunch suggesting the weirdest bar band you've ever heard. And on the title track, Dunn neatly fits tiny phrases between the guitar's turnarounds. "A Growing Disgust" is a lumbering beast and the album's best track, mostly because it makes Dunn work within the context of Osborne and Crover's familiar back and forth. He skips between the plodding beat and the sidewinding lead, creating diagonal crosses between the number's opposing components. It's the tune here that truly pushes Freak Puke from novelty territory, a morass with which Crover and Osborne certainly aren't strangers.
All told, Freak Puke functions better as part of the Melvins' loud, strange strip than a particular destination. A potential one-off by what Osborne has called "the fifth side of the four-sided Melvins triangle," Freak Puke represents a band that's always in motion doing what it's always done: trying a crazy idea, releasing and reveling in the results and, before long, likely moving along to the next instantaneous notion. That's the spirit that's always made the Melvins great, just as it does on Freak Puke, if only in bits and pieces.
