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Strange folks
Silkworm and Steve Turner go acoustic
BY FRANKLIN BRUNO

You wouldn’t expect the skinny frame of Steve Albini, analog-recording fetishist and frontman of Shellac, to have room for an inner singer-songwriter. And you wouldn’t expect Silkworm — the Chicago-based power trio who are among Albini’s best studio customers — to nurture it. But he does, and they do, on the cover of Shellac’s "Prayer to God" that kicks off Silkworm’s all-acoustic, all-covers EP You Are Dignified (Touch & Go). As presented on Shellac’s1000 Hurts album, the song was fragmented by searing tube-amp distortion, and by the yawning spaces between the rhythmic shockwaves of bassist Bob Weston and drummer Todd Trainer.

But the lyrics are straight character-driven narrative voiced by the losing vertex of a love triangle, who petitions the Supreme Being to rid the earth of his ex-lover and her current one. "She can go quietly, by a disease or a blow" — that’s big of you, fella. "But him, just kill him, I don’t care if it hurts." Lurching between pleading vulnerability and masculine vindictiveness, the song — it’s back there somewhere in Shellac’s noise — could have been written by Loudon Wainwright III or the late Warren Zevon at either’s most self-lacerating.

Silkworm’s reading plays up this aspect, with Tim Midgett’s six-string stating the minor-key progression that was implicit in the original. The final chorus is announced not by a rhythm-section body slam but by the entrance of Andy Cohen’s high, keening mandolin. The folksy instrumentation won’t earn Silkworm a slot on A Prairie Home Companion, though. Michael Dalquist’s lead vocal — as drummer, he’s otherwise idle here — is at least as desperate as Albini’s, and any song that ends with 10 variants on the lines "Kill him, fucking kill him, kill him already, kill him" can be reined in only so much.

The rest of the five-song EP is solid and, yes, dignified, but less revelatory. Robbie Fulks’s "Let’s Kill Saturday Night" comes closest, a sick-of-partying anthem made convincing by Cohen’s weary voice. (As always, Cohen sings as if he’d just been through shock therapy, whereas Midgett sings as if he were undergoing it in the vocal booth.) Songs by labelmate Nina Nastasia ("That’s All There Is") and one-time touring partners Pavement (" . . . and then," a late B-side) and Bedhead ("Lepidoptera") round out the set. Those who wish that Silkworm had looked farther afield, or into their own notebooks, for material should seek out It Goes Like This (Purposeful Availment). This Midgett solo EP features five unrecorded originals and a four-track sketch of the Zombies’ "Time of the Season," complete with self-overdubbed oohs and aahs.

Here’s another name not usually associated with folk music: Mudhoney. Or, more precisely, guitarist Steve Turner. His main band may never unhook the Superfuzz (or the Bigmuff) from their signal chain, but that’s what Turner does on his solo debut, Searching for Melody (Roslyn Recordings). It’s not wholly acoustic: the main sonic flavor is the play between his hollow-body and Johnny Sangster’s taut urban-blues fills, with assists from Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard and ’Honey drummer Dan Peters, both underplaying admirably. But by "Touch Me, I’m Sick" standards, this is a John Gorka record.

In part, it’s the sound of a lifelong record-hound who has bought, heard, and auctioned more hardcore and garage rarities than most of us can name turning his attention elsewhere. Dylan gets the requisite nod — Turner quotes "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down" in the title track — but other reference points are less commonplace. "Last Call," the a cappella closer, pays tribute to its author, Greenwich Village–era folk-blues stalwart Dave Van Ronk, who passed away in February 2002. "I’m 37," by new-wave one-shots the Macs, isn’t exactly a folk song, but it has its own kind of benumbed class-consciousness: "I work in a grocery store that stays open 24 hours. . . . People come in and purchase things."

Turner’s taste in cover selections is less surprising than the quality of his originals. (In Mudhoney, he’s barely ever written lyrics or sung lead.) Even those that skirt pastiche are well crafted; "Nothing But the Blues" sounds almost authorless in its simplicity. The songs with more filled-out arrangements ("Not Only You," "Take Care") have an easy, ’50s-styled rockingness that sweeps past their lyrics’ darker patches. But there’s no missing the confessional tone of "Smart Operator" ("I’m a slave/And I’ll always be a cheater") or "New Year’s Day" ("See the sun for the first time this year/It’s clear our love is dying"). Maybe every ounce of apparent emotion and self-doubt here was wrung from some singer-songwriter obscurity rescued from a Seattle garage sale. But that’s not how it sounds.


Issue Date: September 26 - October 2, 2003
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