BLUE CHEER: HIGHLIGHTS AND LOWLIVES (1990)
1) Urban Soldiers; 2) Hunter
Of Love; 3) Girl From London; 4) Blue Steel Dues; 5) Big Trouble In Paradise;
6) Flight Of The Enola Gay; 7) Hoochie Coochie Man; 8) Down And Dirty; 9) Blues
Cadillac.
In order to better prove that they are not «glam
metal», and that they use their heaviness for darker and deeper purposes than
attenuating their sexiness, Blue Cheer hire Jack Endino to produce their next
album — the same Jack Endino that had just produced Nirvana's Bleach and engineered LPs by Mudhoney
and Soundgarden. Clearly, Dickie was still hip to whatever was happening
musically (at least, as far as heavy stuff was concerned) on the West Coast,
and it is only natural that his heart and soul would be drifting towards the
emerging grunge scene rather than the hedonistic and glossy-commercial style
of the hair metal crowds.
Unfortunately, it does not help. Endino
probably agreed to work with those guys out of a basic sense of respect — after
all, one can trace a fairly credible line from the original stoner rock of Vincebus Eruptum to the Seattle grunge
bands — but there was nothing he could do about rectifying their sound or
modernizing their attitudes. Duck MacDonald, a faithful supporter of Tony
Rainier's legacy, keeps pushing on with «muscle riffs» and «lightning solos»;
Peterson's primary points of lyrical and atmospheric interest remain in the
territory of girls, hot rods, and glorifying wasted lifestyles; and altogether,
there is no other point to this record than proving they can still push it all
the way to eleven.
Now I couldn't even say that the riffs are
«bad»: if you look at a song like ʽFlight Of The Enola Gayʼ outside of any sort
of context, its pop metal lines are somewhat catchy. It is only when you
realize that this sounds like an early rehearsal tape for Judas Priest that the
desire to hear it one more time completely evaporates. I mean, if you are
writing a heavy metal song about the bombing of Hiroshima, you want to make
your listeners' hair stand on end, right? You want them to feel the terror, the
heat, the megadeath in their very bones, right? So how are you going to achieve
that effect by relying exclusively on decade-old heavy metal clichés? And no, «low-register guitar riff» does not
automatically result in an allegory of a nuclear explosion, you have to work
just a little bit more for that.
Conversely, much of the album does not stray
too far away from old school 12-bar territory — ʽBlue Steel Duesʼ is nothing
but your basic slow blues-rock jam, and the metallized cover of ʽHoochie Coochie
Manʼ speaks for itself (granted, it is probably one of the heaviest versions of
the song I have ever heard, and Peterson plays the protagonist with gusto,
getting way more into character than on any other song here, but still, just
how many different hoochie coochie men do you really need in one lifetime?). And what does stray away sometimes borders on the ridiculous: ʽGirl From
Londonʼ is a sentimental-cum-metal attempt to conquer the heights of
impressionistic romanticism à la
ʽLittle Wingʼ — Peterson and MacDonald start off quiet and «deep», with nostalgically
gallant-psychedelic imagery conveyed by bad lyrics ("She wears a diamond
beneath the moon / We bring her flowers in the afternoon"), then gradually
unwind and crank it up to high heaven, but the guitar tones and melodic
structure are so predictable it's not even funny.
Maybe the best thing that can, and should, be
said about the album is that it avoids power ballads: ʽGirl From Londonʼ is the
only ballad as such, and it reminds far more of the early successes of Hendrix
and Led Zeppelin than the pompous anthems of the hairy heroes of the Eighties.
At the very least, Peterson is true to his past and consistent in his approach
to music-making. But this does not make Highlights
And Lowlives any less unnecessary — it just makes it a little more
palatable if you do have to listen to
it, for reviewing purposes, for instance. Without even a single point of
genuine interest, it's a thumbs down all the way: plenty of lowlives
all right, but good luck trying to pick out the highlights.
Check "Highlights And Lowlives" (CD) on Amazon
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