Urge Overkill – Exit The Dragon LP – “Jaywalkin'”
A deeper look into the grooves on the Porterhouse 2LP reissue of Exit Th Dragon by Urge Overkill. After the breakthrough that Urge Overkill’s 1993 album, Saturation, turned out to be [the record broke the band into the mainstream charts and yielded two singles that have since become calling card cuts for the band –ed], cheif songwriters Nash Kato and Ed Roesser found themselves in the unenviable position of trying to follow up an alt-rock touchstone while many of the other bands on the scene were on life support – or worse. At that time, the Alternative Nation was still recovering from the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Mia Zapata and, while Soundgarden and Alice In Chains had managed to skate through because both Superunknown and the Jar Of Flies EP had been released right before the death of Kurt Cobain and the beginning of the musical re-evaluation which was the flame-out of grunge, Urge Overkill wasn’t at all left in the same position. Simply said, because of all the tragedies, the record-buying public needed something, but they had no idea what they wanted; they were open to anything (hence how artists like Combustible Edison, Poe, Presidents of the United Statea of America and Seaweed all landed major label recording contracts), and were clearly hoping to fill that void – but that void couldn’t be filled by just anything.
In their search, the record-buying public looked to Chicago and found Urge Overkill – who released the follow-up to their greatest breakthrough, Saturation, on September 25, 1995. Unlike the particularly alt-rock-identified structure and sound of Saturation, it sounds as though Urge took a page from the songbook that The Rolling Stones published in the Sixties, and began writing and recording ides from all over the musical map, and illustrating that development (as well as all the growing pains that come with that affliction) along the way. There were awkward turns as well as incredibly smooth and satisfying ones – and the conglomeration of it all makes for a great and difficult listen.
As potentially complicated as the above discription may sound and as much as listeners might have expected Saturation 2 in response, nothing about Exit The Dragon plays exactly either way – and that fact is evident from the moment “Jaywalkin’” lumbers out to open the album. There, rather than sliding along in a slick and easy manner like the best cuts on Saturation did, “Jaywalkin’” sees guitarist/singer Eddie “King” Roesser take the lead from singer/guitarist Nash Kato and crunch along on a deliberately hobbled rhythm. Through the verses of the song, Roesser gets stuck on a notion of evil in the world and being unable to stop it – before smoothing it out at the turn of the chorus and re-establishing the proto-Seventies rock stomp which characterized the band’s previous albums. That beginning is about as awkward as this description of it reads, and doesn’t leave listeners confident of what might be coming, at first; it is only on repeated listens that those working through the album develop an appreciation for “Jaywalkin’.” Immediately after that, Urge Overkill shifts gears and pulls away from their glammy, alt-rock strengths and into a lugubrious, quasi-Stones-inspired trudge. The delivery isn’t bad, but it isn’t what most listeners would say that they yearn for either; where Urge Overkill has always tended to shine brightest is in the give and take, light and dark movement from song to song which gives the album movement – but when songs just seem to blend or bleed together – as “The Break” and “Need Some Air” seem to do, somehow – the movement stalls and listeners find themselves waiting patiently for the band to do something else. Granted, there are good moments like the surprisingly Beatles-esque “Somebody Else’s Body” and the ecstatic, textural departure which opens “This Is No Place,” but they seem to always succumb to sludgy and meandering turns like “The Mistake” and the second half of “This Is No Place,” which finds Roesser meandering through a song which wants to be songwriterly, but sounds self-indulgent.
As choppy as the first LP proves to be on the way through its’ running (lots of hits, but also more than enough misses), those with the patience to stay with Exit The Dragon through its’ second plate will find that they’re well-rewarded. When needle catches groove and the C-side of the album opens with a very sombre “View Of The Rain” and, in so doing, offers a very different impression of Urge Overkill. There, with the words, “I don’t try anymore,” Nash Kato completely subverts his (and his band’s) meticulously kept image as badass, growling rockers and makes believers that Urge Overkill is capable of having more dimensions than just two; also, as the song develops, Kato makes some inroads which would eventually lead to his solo debut, Debutante, in the coming years and also still leaves the path warm for more development as the cut winds to a close. The same sense of discontent re-emerges in “Last Night/Tomorrow,” but this time Roesser re-takes the mic and imbues the song with a more homegrown indie sensation than a classic rock one and honestly plays a little more timelessly than Kato’s take on the subject. When Exit The Dragon first came out, the gloss on Kato’s cuts translated really well for a pop audience but, now thirty years later, Roesser’s presentations of alt-rock have proven to have aged far better, and come across as far more solid for a modern audience. Frustratingly, the play on both the C- and D-sides of this reissue feels like they’re playing really short at just three cuts each and, with “Tin Foil” opening gently and with chords that feel similar to the ones that The Velvet Underground used for “Heroin,” the C-side feels just too short and strung out for its own good. There are innumerable ways that both the band and Porterhouse Records could have re-imagined how best to make this reissue play but, in listening here, it becomes evident that the wrong choice was made.
As roughly as the C-side of Exit The Dragon may have played, the D-side wins the prize for playing short and sweetly. Right off, in “Monopoly,” Urge Overkill illustrates that they’re capable of producing a fine and un-ironic pop nugget adorned with chiming keyboards and a higher-register vocal from Kato before clearly beginning to collapse with “And You’ll Say” (the cut opens with Roesser exclaiming, “Let me just record it” and then earnestly producing one of the most underrated cuts on the record) and then collapsing completely with the caterwauling sound which opens “Digital Black Epilogue.” Now, to its credit, after that fairly grating sound, “Digital Black Epilogue” does fall into a decent rhythm with Kato singing sweetly and warmly to an un-credited female singer. Throughout the song, the duo trades lines about young love [“twenty-three years old” according to the lyrics –ed] and longing contrasted against a fairly nasal guitar that has been saddled awkwardly with either a chorus or a phase pedal. Because of that production/performance choice, listaners won’t have any problem remembering that this album was recorded in the Nineties – but while it may come off as an inelegant choice to have been made at first, the guitar soon proves to blend in in a completely unique way, and eventually enriches the final moments of both the song and the album before it closes.
Standing back and taking this reissue of Exit The Dragon as a whole, it’s easy to see that while it may have been marked with unusual choices at the time of its’ making (between choosing producers best known for making Fugees and Cypress Hill records, incorporating slick, Seventies styling when alt-rock (while beginning to fall from favor was still the most popular form), the album still plays well and strongly – and even stands peerless among other albums which were trying desperately to find a stable purchase on what had become an unexpectedly slippery slope, at the time. With that in mind, this reissue plays as a fantastic document of its moment from a band who might not have always made the most expected (or wisest) of choices, but did manage to come through and make memorable music, when it mattered. Exit The Dragon certainly exemplifies that, for Urge Overkill. [Bill Adams]
Artist:
https://www.urgeoverkill.com
https://www.facebook.com/urgeoverkillmusic
https://www.instagram.com/urgeoverkill
Album:
The Porterhouse reissue of Urge Overkill’s Exit The Dragon is out now. Buy it here, directly from Porterhouse Records. https://porterhouserecords.com/store/UO/exitTheDragon.html
