Best Of Blurt Vol. 1: The Fish Needs A Bike
Review in Hybrid Magazine
Prior to exposure to this "best of" compilation, I was blissfully ignorant of Blurt's existence, in a manner similar to my previous ignorance of Jim Thirlwell's band Foetus. There are other similarities between these bands in that they were both post-punk bands formed in the late '70s to early '80s, they are both still alive and together, and they have both dwelled in obscurity for the whole of their 20+ years of existence. And they have an edge that places them so far out of the realm of any musical genre that either could possibly inhabit, that they, in essence, define the wholes of the respective microcosms which they comprise.
In other words, nobody does it the way they do it.
Drums, guitar and saxophone: that's it. What issues forth is an inspired or imbecilic gutter stream of the nastiest, sludgiest jazz-punk-funk-rock ever to pollute your ear canal. With inebriated fury, it leaves red-hot contrails in its wake, roaring and screeching; cutting with an edge both jagged and sharp.
I hate the saxophone- really, I do. It is used to wreak the sorts of musical anaesthesia that we would willingly allow Roddy Piper or Keith David to beat out of us in an interminable fight scene. But oh, in these hands, it becomes an instrument of the lowest sort- nasty, raunchy and vile. It transcends cool, boss, rad, the bomb or any other slango we might use to place it on the pedestal of unreachable superlative.
Or maybe it's all an elaborate piece of junk: a hot rod with a glued-on faux rocket engine. It is, perhaps, a bluff: utterly lacking in substance or style, dressed up with funky beats and drunken reverbs.
But I won't call; no, I fold.
-JD
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