** Daddy Longhead

SUPER MASONIC

(Honest Abe's Custom Records)

Apparently the Top 40 Butthole Surfers just weren't silly or grotesque enough for bassist Jeff Pinkus. Or maybe Gibby Haynes's jive talking was getting in the way of the kind of bass-guitar showboating that Pinkus seems to have acquired a taste for. (So, the guy picked up a few nasty habits from former-Zep-bassist-turned-Butthole-producer John Paul Jones in the studio.) Whatever the story behind the story is, Pinkus has amicably parted ways with the Buttholes, so that he might, among other things (we hope), devote more time to Daddy Longhead, a side-project trio he started with guitarist/fiddler Jimbo Younge back in '90. A partially digested meal of meaty Texas honky-tonk and thick, soupy psychedelia, the result sounds like a poorly recorded ZZ Top demo session or maybe a drunken attempt to fuse the fat-assed funk of Grand Funk Railroad with the bad-ass-id fuzz of Foghat or Blue Cheer. In other words, it's chunk-and-boogie blooze rock smeared with cheap chili-and-cheese sauce and served with a lascivious song about butter ("Churn").

-- Matt Ashare

(Daddy Longhead play the Loud Festival upstairs at the Middle East this Sunday, April 20, with Speedball Baby, Guitar Wolf, and others.)