Having lived in these British Isles for around 17 years now I’ve met many friends across multiple cities in these lands, as well as many more friends in “contental” Europe. We share a lot of a musicial interests but one spot in the past 60-70 years of popular music where I diverge drastically from many of these friends is the 1990s. Most folks fondly remember the 90s for its electronic rave culture, “Brit Pop”, indie rock or metal. Or perhaps its output of goth/industrial where friends of mine that are the same age as myself got started in music. Or more so the alternative rock boom of the 90s spearheaded by many notable American flagship bands of the time: Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Hole, Soundgarden, L7, The Breeders, Garbage, The Cranberries… and the list goes on.
There’s been occasions at small flat gatherings or post-club afterparties in the deep hours of the morning where there’s reflection and sharing of music we’ve grown up on. And as many of us are of a similar age, the playlists most times go back to our formative years in the 1990s with a frenzied co-operative listening party of the tracks and artists that mean so much to us during that time.
For me, what I was listening to at that time was very different, with most bands I held “near and dear” at the time being mostly unknown to my current friends, mainly due to myself being involved in a networked underground that was quite specific to North America and only really touched the shores of Europe during that time. It was a time of all-ages shows, basement shows, zines, personal politics and a network of bands doing it themselves and booking their own tours. Throughout this website there’s many artifacts of what I was listening to at the time, including other entries in this Track Of The Day feature, various mixes and playlists as well as being listed on some of my favourite influencial records.
When asked what I was listening to at the time I’d have a difficult time trying to name bands that those asking might have heard of… Unwound? Shotmaker? Nation Of Ulysses? In most cases I’d settle on mentioning a favourite of mine who I assumed is the most well-known of the lot — Fugazi — and get a response such as “Ah… Waiting Room! I heard that in the pub last week!” or something similar to that.
At times during these gatherings the conversation might move to the “hot topic” of the day for music in the 1990s: “selling out” and signing to a major label, which in those days — especially in the punk/hardcore underground I came from — was a major sacrilege. One of my favourite record labels from the 90s — Washington D.C.’s Dischord Records — notably had two great bands from its roster that I loved that made the move to the majors and had some backlash from their underground followings when they did so, these bands being Jawbox and Shudder To Think.
Yet despite these moves into the corporate machine as it were, the major label debuts of both of these bands were written and produced as both bands intended them to be without any real artistic compromise. 1994’s For You Own Special Sweetheart by Jawbox is a clever masterpiece of noise-inflected yet melodic and intelligent post-hardcore. This album has since been re-released twice (2009 and 2018) on DeSoto Records run by the band’s bass player, Kim Coletta, many years long after the band broke up (and then subsequently reformed again in the late 2010s). The major label debut by Shudder To Think in 1994 was far more daring and stranger and in my opinion one of most oddball major label signings of the 1990s. This debut was the band’s Pony Express Record which is still to me at least a masterpiece until this day.
Shudder To Think before that point had been going for quite some time and playing many underground shows of the punk/hardcore variety, forming in 1986 and having had already released four albums of quirky, melodic post-hardcore including Curses, Spells, Voodoos, Mooses (1988) and then three on the aforementioned Dischord Records: Ten Spot (1990), Funeral At The Movies (1991) and Get Your Goat (1992). Then, ahead of their major label debut, the band underwent a bit of a line-up change with the shuffling in of former Jawbox drummer Adam Wade and new guitarist Nathan Larson, who had previously played in another classic DC hardcore band, Swiz. This refreshed line up laid the base for the strange musical landscape of what was to come.
Opening Pony Express Record is the track “Hit Liquor”, which was previously released with a different recording a couple of years earlier on Dischord and the album version as the first track on their major label debut lays out all of their strange and beautiful ideas right from the start. Trying to describe the music is difficult — there’s a bit of an homage to 80s glam rock with it’s heavy rock posturing — the band Queen comes to mind — but heavily abstracted through post-hardcore discord and musical concepts that have more in common with avant garde 20th composers than other alternative, grunge-inflected rock gracing the airwaves of MTV at the time. It’s an album of fragmented rhythms and constantly changing time signatures, often so numerous within any given track that it would likely make your average listener’s head spin.
Add to that the effeminate presentation and vocal style of singer/guitarist Craig Wedren, whose voice can at times be fragile and tender and then ramp up to an almost operatic quality, as in the case of “Hit Liquor” with its cryptic lyrics opening with:
Dead, asleep
Wonder when she’ll come to
My hip liquor
A party of mouths
A finger-fan courtship
The case of her bones are softer than loose meat
A day on the belt so surely I’ll get thin
Then really rock
The track has many stops and starts which move into a melodic, drone and feedback drenched bridge with a “shoegaze” quality, only to return to the song’s main phrase at the end but opting to chop out one eighth note count, resulting in a jarring time count of 2 bars of 4/4 and followed by a third that’s 7/8. After all of these years I still get lost trying to count the metering in the final 40-45 seconds of the song.
The promotional video for “Hit Liquor” — the first to come out for this album — is another strange and cleverly unsettling mélange of the band as sailors on a grungy, murky boat getting involved into subtly implied necrophilia, butchery and generally playing off the homosexual stereotypes one might associate with sailors working in tight quarters. It’s a far cry from the colour-saturated, Raygun-magazine influenced visual styles that many other alt rock bands were pushing in their music videos at the time.
Pony Express Record overall is quite varied and takes the listener on a bit of journey — from its more ballsier three opening tracks, including “Nine Fingers On You” — to more restrained tracks that to me bring in a more murkier jazz influence, such as “Sweet Year Old”. There’s also the track “X French T-Shirt” which appears at the mid point of the album, and arguably their most accessible, melodic album on the track that might be able to pass along with other, more radio friendly alternative rock tracks of the day. Finally, nearer to the end of the album is “Trackstar”, which to me may come across as obtuse and meandering to others but it’s a beautiful track from start to finish.
The album in retrospect has been reflected and analysed in the subsequent decades that followed by any given number of widely read music publications, including Pop Matters, Treble, Stylus, Counter Culture, AV Club, Modern Drummer and any given number of personal blogs for those that might want to read further. It’s also made a few of “best of” lists for albums released in the 1990s.
Writing this piece coincides with the 30th anniversary of this album, which was recently mused upon by singer/guitarist Craig Wedren.
Following Pony Express Record the band followed up with another major label release, 1997’s 50,000 BC before dissolving — at least as far as a functioning rock band. Shudder To Think continued on writing film soundtracks, most notably for First Love, Last Rites (1998), High Art (1998) and the popular Velvet Goldmine (1999) — a musical film paying homage to the glam rock of the 1970s. Even today band members Craig Wedren and Nathan Larson continue on with soundtrack work for television and film, and are still active musically.
So overall here’s one you might have not heard before, and it’s one release I’m still getting new things out of it every time I listen to it.