Cows

Sorry in Pig Minor (Amphetamine Reptile)
by Nik Rainey

A few minutes alone with the Cows and you realize how much you miss this kinda stuff: Pinwheel-eyed, portable-meth-lab cowboy music, the kind of pockmarked psychotidelia with a bloated-floater-blue streak of juvenile humor (on the earthy, abstract side of the blotter sheet rather than the scatalogical positivism practiced by most of their rope-a-dopey ilk) that hasn’t been done particularly well since the Surfers released their last unabashedly great LP, Locust Abortion Technician. But there’s something to ’em – maybe it’s the cold climes of their native Minnesota as opposed to the peyote-rich Texan bleachlands that inspire the sweaty mania of their nearest kin in the music?-I-thought-you-said-mucus scene – a solidity, maybe, a grounding in something that may keep them from penetrating the barriers of structured sound into realms that rise below mere music into gutter transcendence (where the subhuman achieves the sublime – it does happen), but which makes their seedy (CD) pranksterism (no fair peeking at the joke book; just be careful with the volume knob during the first few minutes of Sorry in Pig Minor) and giddy genre-snatching (love the bugleriffic Mexisotan swing of “El Shiksa”) that much more fun – it’s nice to hear a dementoid platter that doesn’t send me running for the Kaeopectate afterwards. The Melvins’ Dale Crover produced, giving this a fuckfaced clarity that wears better than the murky muck (wasn’t he in Boogie Nights?) you’ve come to expect(orate) from this type o’ mulch. It pokes precise pinholes in rock’s overblown balloon and for that we all must bow ‘n’ scrape to their bovine eminence. (Convolution-free translation of the above: I like it, I like it.)