Sock-Tight is the new project from Mike Watt and Raymond Pettibon who I hope you are already more than familiar with as both have very long prolific careers with The Minutemen, The Stooges, Firehose et al for Mike Watt and as a legendary visual artist in Raymond Pettibon's case. Smudge is there debut album that is released as part of this year's Record Store day.
This album opens with The Wisdom Of The Thing that features tribal style drumming and a bass undertow with spoken word vocals that makes this sound like something on Giorno Poetry Systems that is only accentuated by the blasts of Brass.
Four-Way Pony-Up features a vocal back and forth as the story of being at the races in an almost Bukowski style unfolds against the sparse drumming and sax squalls dissect the conversation. The style of this piece is sort of reminiscent of Jack Kerouac's album with Steve Allen and Zoot Sims.
M F C K is about meeting the man or being the man over a slow strolling beat. The Road To Go Slow just feels like a continuation of the same or similar theme as this story unfolds and it almost feels like something Mick Farren would have done.
Unchurned Melodies goes in a sort of James Chance sax attack meets one of the more spoken word tracks on the Atavistic Out Of Their Minds compilation ready to split our minds asunder and re-work what we think of as what melody should be.
Burma Shave is a dark tale with odd be-bop gone wrong backing to make us wonder what a Burma Shave means to them. Not sure if it's a cover of the Tom Waits song or not or if they are just obsessed by shaving cream or the adverts for said cream.
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Humbucker Fucker feels like stream of consciousness poetry that seems to be telling a tale of what might happen to the man who uses Burma Shave and well what happens or not is well worth finding out and we are very much in Giorno Poetry systems territory even while they want to go to Gazzari's again.
Got Dapples Yay may be for a sun dappled day when this sort of spoken word poetry is back in fashion and we all have no problem working out what this is about as the sax screams in our ears and that bassline underneath it all just keeps it moving nicely.
The album closes with Who Tattle Told that has the feel of the sort of story Lewis Grizzard might come up with as the drumming gets more furious and this just seems to tie up some of what's been going on but obviously leave a few questions unanswered and leaves the listener needing to hear this a good few times in hopes of getting what's really going on.
Find out more at https://orgmusic.com/releases/sock-tight-smudge/
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