Mudhoney - Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge
Mudhoney's second full length album is a boisterous, youthful and somewhat schizophrenic collection of garage rock tunes. Moving another step away from pure grunge (a direction that was started on the "You're Gone" E.P.), and towards punk oriented slacker rock, "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge" was a surprising turn for the band. Mudhoney was becoming an interesting phenomenon in the Sub Pop family; while they represented the forefront of the sound that would eventually skyrocket the label and some of its artists to international fame, as soon as that sound finally started to catch on, Mudhoney was moving on musically to other sonic territories.
The most remarkable thing about "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge" is the instrumentation. Organ and harmonica are not the kind of things one might expect from a grunge/punk/garage rock band, but sure enough, Mudhoney employed those sounds, to varying effectiveness. The harmonica touches on "Movin' Out" are surprisingly fluid, while the opener, "Generation Genocide" which is a brief instrumental chock full of organ parts by Mark Arm, is unnecessary at best.
The production quality on this album works well with the band's sound. It is full without being overly glossy, and yet comfortably intimate.
Mudhoney had begun thinking about shopping around for a major label around this time, and almost sold "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge" to one of the labels bidding on them, but ultimately decided to stay with Sub Pop, at least for this album. It was to be their last on the world-famous independent label that helped them make a name for themselves, and vice versa.
Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge - 8 out of 10.
Videos were shot for "Let It Slide," "Good Enough," "Into The Drink," & "Fuzzgun '91." For a band that openly rejected the pursuit of fame, this many videos was a surprising choice in 1991. Today, a band can shoot videos and maintain an indie edge, because of avenues like YouTube to promote them, but in those days, videos were shot to be played on MTV, and that was it.
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