33 rebellions per minute
"Wo't you come and wash away the clouds?"
1994
Soundgarden, SUPERUNKNOWN
The music term "grunge" was never really defined, emerging instead from a geographical scene of bands
with some similarities and some differences. On the whole, I take Pearl Jam, not Nirvana, as the genre's
ticket to fame; Nirvana already had a musical descriptor: "punk". So therefore grunge also extends to Alice
In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Live, Bush. The linking factors? Self-centered depression. Slow sludgy
minor-key riffs like Black Sabbath abandoned in the '80's, rhythmically inexorable. Vocals like a
stampeding herbivorous quadruped. Soundgarden's SUPERUNKNOWN is among my few real favorites
of the style. Mainly I like it for a few songs: "My Wave", "Fell On Black Days", "Spoonman",
"Superunknown", "Head Down", sometimes "Black Hole Sun". The first three are linked by having 5, 6,
or 7 beats per measure, which I not only like intellectually, but which just makes them catchier (the band
seems to agree, having picked them as singles). The last two have quasi-Eastern SGT.PEPPER-inflected
sonics behind the heavy-riff raff. Why is this good? Is there something about being trampled by screaming
water buffalo that feels better if at least you know you're being trampled by agile buffalo who know the
basics of math and Buddhism? Yes, there is.
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