Butthole Surfers – After The Astronaut LP – “Mexico”
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Butthole Surfers’ After The Astronaut LP. I confess that, when a vinyl copy of Butthole Surfers’ After The Astronaut arrived on my desk, I was thrilled – but I held off on reviewing it right away. I figured, “Why rush? I already reviewed the album once years ago [with a CDR copy that was given to me by Surfers drummer King Coffey –ed], let others have their turn.” The problem with that logic proved to be that many of the current batch of “critics” didn’t really know how to approach the Butthole Surfers OR After The Astronaut, nor did they recognize that the context of the album’s delayed release is a pretty important plot point to the fact that it is now finally available. It’s in the spirit of choosing not to let history repeat itself and see Butthole Surfers go unappreciated by a whole new generation of writers who have been caught who have been caught in exactly the same pitfalls as their fore-bearers that I compose this warmer and more open-minded review.
As soon as needle catches groove on the A-side of After The Astronaut, the familiarity of the tone and form of The Weird Revolution is obvious – but that is not to say that one album is unrecognizable from the other. No, while The Weird Revolution and After The Astronaut both open both open with “The Weird Revolution” and the version on After The Astronaut is about thirty seconds longer than the one on The Weird Revolution, it also plays much tighter; the song’s mechanical beat penetrates the mix far more sharply/cleanly and singer Gibby Haynes’ bastardization/parody of Malcolm X’s impassioned 1963 speech follows suit by cutting through better and more cleanly than it did on The Weird Revolution. In the case of this particular cut, the difference between it and the version that appeared on The Weird Revolution is negligible; the production applied to this album is more vibrant, but any editing which might have been done to this version is really, really mild.
Immediately after “The Weird Revolution” closes, After The Astronaut‘s play gets better as “Intelligent Guy” swaps out the patchwork assembly that the song featured on The Weird Revolution and downshifts into an almost infectious, seething frenzy. Here, the play runs really fluidly and lets listeners feel the darkness and inherent danger about the song instead of constantly up- and downshifting, as the song did on The Wierd Revolution, and the same happens on this album’s version of “Jet Fighter,” which makes the best possible use of the “ballad of” style that the Surfers had been perfecting as far back as on Independent Worm Saloon (see “Ballad of Naked Man”), but skips the distortion and hobbled tempos which appear on the Weird Revolution version of the song. Weirdly, the focus and comparatively less frenzied version of “Mexico” which appears on After The Astronaut packs a fraction of the punch that its’ predecessor did on Weird Revolution, and so really weighs the play of the A-side down here – a fact only sort of remedied by the far more frenetic (and fun) play of “Imbuya” (the first cut on Astronaut to not feature a “different” version on The Weird Revolution) and the subdued-to-the-point-of-sounding-drugged version of “Venus,” which closes the side. Now, granted, just because “Venus” self-indulges in a trip-hoppy, lilting groove and Haynes only seeks to ride the vibe for about four minutes and not pen a decent lyric sheet (lines like, Yea, everybody talkin’ ’bout the seal in the sand/ And the steeple of the sequel will they every understand?/And the people in the window are the victims of the sky/And the lonesome need to bear it, I hope they just die,” are weak at most, and utterly meaningless, at least), that doesn’t mean the song is worthless – rather, the instrumental changes and watery styling are more than a little hypnotic and can hold listeners enthralled. When the song does let out, listeners may be surprised to discover that, as far as the play goes (and as familiar – given that, other than the reversed sitar noises which function as the bridge in the song, the rest of it is more like the variant of the same song on The Weird Revolution than any of the other “repeats”on that album), there’s a charged sensation that will have them ready to keep moving with the B-side of the album energetically, when the needle lifts.
As charged as “Venus” might leave listeners though, the fractured and elegiac feel of “The Last Astronaut” will leave them feeling as though that energy has just been sucked up with a straw, as it opens the B-side. Part of the problem here (arguably the greatest one, in fact) is that closing one side with a reasonably slow-moving cut just to open the next side with movement that is completely lacking in any energy at all is just too much of a forgettable thing to line up on Butthole Surfers album; even when the band came close to committing a similar sort of mistake on 1991’s piouhgd, the band didn’t end one side with a letdown and open the other with a similar thing so clearly.
Frustratingly, the band continues it trip-hopping trek through the B-side of After The Astronaut with the three-minute easy-listening snooze that is “Yentel” and the lyric-free, vaguely Poe-inspired knock-off “Junkie Jenny in Gaytown,” but the light at the end of the tunnel begins blazing brightly as soon as “They Came In” appears. There, listeners will be elated to discover that the version of the song – which was unceremoniously buried on the Mission Impossible 2 soundtrack in the year 2000, originally – appears without the extra synths and other digital nonsense that was attached to the Weird Revolution version, and really gets to shine. Here, an ominous rhythm blasts forth first with a guitar chord progression that immediately recalls dissonance in its half-step movement coupled with clattering digital touches on top and a haunting, paranoid vocal. Granted, the presentation isn’t perfect (it’s worth pointing out that the lyric sheet really just rearranges the same set of words in different sequences, really), but the less-cluttered mix makes it a lot easier to enjoy than its’ Weird Revolution counterpart; as repetitive as the song is (the lyric sheet is really only re-arrangements of the lines, “They came in the clothes that I’m in/ And through the phone on my wall/ They were strangers/ They drive in the car that I’m in/ And you never see their face at all/ They’re strangers,” repeated for five minutes and five seconds), it’s really easy to get hooked on and, when it does end, listeners may find the song genuinely addictive. After that, the side does begin to taper off as “I Don’t Have A Problem” keeps up with the repetitive vocal tradition that “They Came In” introduced but completely abandons song craft as a theremin squeals and a string section sample repeats and, honestly, gets kind of boring – when it’s stacked against how well the rest of the album plays.
…And, after “I Don’t Have A Problem” lets out and it has felt like the Butthole Surfers have run out of new things to try, the band gives up one last blast of hardcore brilliance in “Turkey And Dressing” before closing up shop. There, Paul Leary picks up a bass to add a driving force to his guitar snarl, completely casts off all of the electronic touches and sonic refinements that the band has added to their sound album-by-album and just aims to melt listeners’ collective face for one last cut. Here, drummer King Coffey lays down a pummelling assault comparable to when the Surfers featured two drummers on stage while Leary keeps to a simple and speedy rhythm part on guitar while putting an absolutely howling lead figure on top and Gibby Haynes issues a perfectly unintelligible vocal [the vinyl release doesn’t feature lyric sheet and, in vintage Surfers fashion, features Haynes bellowing into something which sounds like a megaphone – so what he’s saying is anyone’s guess –ed] for two-and-a-half-minute blast before simply shutting the sound down; no fade-out, no growling noise repeating to leave a final disconcerting sound, it’s just done. Honestly, that “Turkey And Dressing” does close as succinctly as it does will leave some listeners both surprised and nervous, in the end; long-time fans have grown accustomed to a sense of mania which seems not to know when (or how) to quit so, when they do exactly that here, they won’t know how to process it, right away.
Now, standing back from it and taking the entire album into account, every critic will ask themselves and their readers if After The Astronaut was really worth the wait and the myth-making about the album. On this critic’s case, I tend to believe that myth-making never holds up under scrutiny – but After The Astronaut isn’t without its charms; there are cuts here which are worth hearing by more than just the admittedly devout. By the same token though, I question if the presentation couldn’t have been done better – for example, in this era of deluxe reissues, wouldn’t it have been a good idea to press a double album version of this music which also includes the material which appears on The Weird Revolution, to give the whole story of this fraught album all in one box? If nothing else, it could be argued that, if the band chose to explore that avenue at some point, they’d have one more release to put on racks, at some point. All I’m saying is that, while fans will be interested in this release, they’d be interested in that one too. [Bill Adams]
Further Reading:
Ground Control Magazine – Butthole Surfers [Discography Review] https://groundcontrolmag.com/butthole-surfers-discography-review/
Ground Control Magazing – Butthole Surfers – self-titled 10” EP – [Review] https://groundcontrolmag.com/vinyl-vlog-702/
Artist:
https://www.facebook.com/ButtholeSurfersMusic
https://www.instagram.com/buttholesurfers/?hl=en
https://buttholesurfersmovie.com
https://buttholesurfers.bandcamp.com
Album:
The After The Astronaut LP is out now. Buy it here on Sunset Blvd Records’ official page. https://www.sunsetblvdrecords.com/
