A LEGACY OF SUNSHINE
Mother Hips release their seventh record, Pacific Dust.
By Corby Anderson
I have before me a new record, recently released by my favorite band. This review will serve as a streaming journal of my thoughts recorded upon the First Spin. All subsequent spins, or listens, as it were (does a digital file spin, per se?), will forever be offset by the virginal experience.
Like original sex with a human being who is kind, drunk, or horny (or all three) enough to give your own body a randy go at their own – and ultimately for good, bad or otherwise – that first listen to a piece of music is always the one that lodges itself firmly into your memory mud, a road sign from which all future mental mapping of the work finds its bearing.
This record is called Pacific Dust, and it is by the Mother Hips, a Northern California-based band that I have spent most of my adult life listening to, following around (in what might be considered a stalkerish manner by lesser entertainers), and generally blathering on about in every possible communicative way that a pseudo-mediaite can muster. It is their second record released since their return to the footlights in 2004 following a short hiatus, which at one time threatened to last an indefinite time. Such is the nature of hiatuses, work, war and love.
The record before this, Kiss the Crystal Flake, was essentially a game-changing record for the band. The seventh song, TGIM, literally convinced me to quit my job of eight years and move to Monterey, California to be a writer. That I did this on the verge of the direst economic atmosphere seen since the days when a family car cost .17 cents is not really my concern. If I’ve learned anything from the experience, its that you can’t argue with fate.
It was said long ago, and remains true to this day, that there is something preternaturally synchronous about the song writing that the Mother Hips offer to those who orbit within draw of their gravity.
What was said exactly was that the Mother Hips “write the soundtrack to our lives”, and, well, in my case its fucking true, actually. I know, I know. Plenty of people can say the same about their favorite bands, legitimately so. That is art, of course. However, speaking directly of the band whose latest record I am about to partake in for this seminal time, all that I know is there are too many instances of lyrics, moods, and tones fitting perfectly the unfolding events of my life. Breakups, makeup’s, chance meetings, road trips, work, philosophy – they have almost all been eased and understood at some point thanks to an eerie lyric, an otherwise comically coincidental timing.
I would point out that this is the seventh record released officially by the Hips.
1. Back to the Grotto
2. Part Timer Goes Full
3. Shootout
4. Later Days
5. Green Hills of Earth
6. Kiss the Crystal Flake
7. Pacific Dust.
I was once an athlete. Will be someday once more, when the knees mend and the waist wastes. But that is another story. Suffice to say, my personal number in baseball, softball, basketball, and professional mushroom collecting, were there such an event, is seven. It is my karmic sign – the symbol that most defines my life. I was born on 1/7/72. I was married on 7/7/07, and at that wedding, we drank 777 Seven & 7’s. I’m just saying.
On a side note: A man possibly named Jose Garcia JUST called and in let on that he may actually rent my house in Colorado. This is of note in that this empty, plan-sinking house has been lingering like a rotten fish in my life for at least two months. If it goes on much longer, we’ll have to redirect the Good Ship Wildhair and head back to Colorado abruptly, arriving with wet tails between our legs. Strange timing, given that I’ve just gone 47 increasingly concerning days without a phone call on this matter. We go from rightside up to upside down and back so quickly these days.
I received a package this afternoon from the record label. In it were this little heavenly chunk of gold and silver CD and a few 11×17 posters with the record cover emblazoned smartly on them. I am one of the lucky few getting an early listen, thanks to winning a contest to host a listening party here in Carmel. I won’t be the first to say it, and in fact I usually mock those who do, but in this case it is true: I never win anything, not even contests rigged by me for nobody but me to actually win. Once I ran a harmless ring of fraud in which I used my status as a 17 year old radio station “sports director” to get a local drag strip to fork over some free passes for something called the “Winternational”. (FRIDAY FRIDAY FRIDAY! – God those were fun commercials to make) Of course, when I showed up at the gates with my nearly identical 19 year old brother as my “grand prize winner” it didn’t take long for the race track staff to figure out that, as MJ would say, “scamonee”.
Later in life, I got a free ticket to go ski Steamboat Ski area from the Aspen Ski Company, who I worked for “loading ass for the Man” as a lift operator. Somehow, in all my charms, I parlayed that one free ticket into a blown meniscus, a massive hospital bill, an arrest for theft of service or some such trumped up charge, a good healthy firing from a job that same brother put his ass on the line for, a two year banning from skiing the mountain by the president of the company, a sudden move to Los Angeles, an awkward move in with a girl whose first instinct upon my arrival was to immediately scram for the hills of Kentucky, an unfinished novel and other anomalies of fate.
The record cover itself is a fantastically snappy, nostalgic painting of a Carmel-like sunset cocktail party. I believe that I won the listening party contest because I proposed to recreate the record cover with my own party (mustaches and all), which I intend to do on Friday the 23rd of October at Carmel Beach.
But back to the record, which I will now, at long last, actually play!
Song one is the bombastic, mesmerizing White Falcon Fuzz. I’ve heard the song already, thanks to a sneak preview, and have had many great moments to date soaking in the atmosphere of The Fuzz. The song is different lyrically, in that it’s writer, Tim Bluhm, packs twice as many words into the lines as one might be used to hearing in a song.
But what words! “I don’t know what the penalty is for thinking you can do what’s left of what’s never been done. And if I never find out its either cause I did it or I tried and I failed, said forget it and walked into the sun.” All of that in 16 seconds, backed by a sweet picking Byrdsian riff with a meaty, hooking walkup to the chorus, which in typical Hips fashion is quite a departure from the rest of the song. Time change is both the musical and philosophical identifying mark of this band, and here they hit both marks. With Kiss the Crystal Flake, the band saw their first commercial distribution on a widescale basis thanks to the inclusion of a few of their songs on the game Rock Star. White Falcon Fuzz seems perfectly written for such a thing, with the added bonus that it’s lyrics will likely force the curious teens to look up words like “thus” and “transfigured”, which is never a bad thing.
Early on, Bluhm sings of waking up late at night to write a song, and thinking he sees a dark figure in his house. As his wife sleeps nearby, he writes while fighting a battle with this dark figure using a sharp pencil for a weapon in the 5th dimension. I am not sure what the 5th dimension is, other than the R&B group who somehow recorded the hippy anthem “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In”. I have trouble enough with the three dimensions that I operate in. But this simple line is enough to set the theme for the whole record. In Kiss the Crystal Flake the enduring first line was about a mission being undertaken, about time and its importance. The theme of time is what defined that record.
I am guessing that this fifth dimension, this fight to write it all down before the dreams overwhelm the original thought, and the ultimate musical application of that thought will course through this record.
Third Floor Story is track two, historically the “hit” spot on a record. It is an older song that has finally found a place on a record, and justifiably so. A real juking bit of California funk and soul, this song is one of the easiest songs to dance to from a band that offers some seriously danceable tunes.
Third Floor Story is a rollicking song which seems a frontal assault on the record industry, a business that for years has failed this historically important, influential rock and roll band. One stanza directly addressed this conundrum, as well as hinting at the long past influence of drugs on the band. “The company quit/they didn’t do shit for our new record/What do I have to do to get a break, won’t someone just give me a hit?/Oh I feel better already…” Later, the tempo chills significantly for the lines “I have a heart that is older than you/I’m a soldier and I’m hurt, its true/So many times I have tried to brush it off, but your sharpened wit nearly ran me through” This followed by a nasty toned lick and the pleading, honest chorus, and capped by the decaying disharmonious breakdown tones of the songs fade out.
Jess Oxox is up next. It is the first song that I have never heard before this typing. I always wondered what Oxox actually meant. Is it an acronym, or a stand-alone word? At any rate, to me the word harkens back to eight grade Valentines Day cards and comments written in high school yearbooks. To this point, the only instance of Oxox being written on my behalf was an anonymous red lip sticking of my driver side window in the parking lot of my old school.
The song has that other hallmark of the Hips sound – a steady, driving guitar rhythm, less fuzzed-out but still similar to those which have made Weezer so famous. Now I am starting to see the production value of this record for what it seems to be: outstandingly produced, tight, poppy, out front like a great sip of wine. I am no oenophile, but I am thinking that this song is going to go over well with the wine crowd. Soft harmonies are layered in over mellow leads, driven along by that signature drive. I sense hints of 1970’s pop bands like Seals and Croft and Wings in the fabric, pushed by sentimental lyrics of a possibly unrequited or doomed springtime love story. “My bandages were fresh and clean, they had just been replaced/my blood was in my veins where they belonged.” Near the end, Bluhm sings of having to leave Jess, like a dream, perhaps as a nod to the vagabonding life of music and it’s needy mistress, the road.
The fourth track, Lion and the Bull, starts out as a five beat, clap slapping anthem, similar to what Foghat would sound like if played through a cloud of helium. For some reason, I immediately think of the 1988 Oakland A’s baseball team, the one that lost to the damned Dodgers in that October’s World Series thanks in part to gimp-hero Kurt Gibson’s clenched fist, pinch hit homerun. Fuck the Dodgers.
This is a “Greg Song”, the first of the record, best as I can tell. Greg Songs are notable in that he usually sings alone until the chorus, which tend to be coated in the sweet harmonies that Blumn and Loiacono have mastered, but also in that the subject matter of his songs tend towards the mystical. Not always, but at times. The theme of this song is had to ascertain upon first listen. “I aim low, with my horns right through your soul/I know I’m slow/so stubborn and slow.”
Lion and the Bull seems like it might be about a relationship – ruminating on the give and take that occurs within, and about what the next step might be. Those who subscribe to Wilco fanzines will absolutely love this song; it has that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot urban snap to it.
The Mother Hips, backstage. Photo by Andrew Quist
starts out by painting a frustrating road scene. Broke down for the first time, a long way from the next town. Blumn sings in his honey-toned vibrato as the guitars jangle along in a poppy rock meter. As with many Hips songs, to their credit, one hears elements of long forgotten riffs. Here a
George Harrison high pitched slide, there a
Joe Walsh walk down, perhaps a slack guitar note from
Don Ho thrown in as an accent. There is one way out. I am not sure what it is, or if it ever gets decided on, but that is for future study, and another reason that I love to listen to this band. Earlier I mentioned that their songs have served as a sort of songbook for my life, and something tells me that this song will eventually hit me at exactly the right time, giving some comfort when one of life’s inevitable breakdowns occur.
All In Favor goes sixth on Pacific Dust. It starts slow and mellow with a simple campfire strum and an easygoing lead working together. This song is a tune ostentatiously about the democratic process of making music, methinks, and serves in a way as a lovely sentimental self-portrait. “So we got ourselves a van/took it all across the land/ till one day on five we caught on fire/yeah, just like our egos/we took a vote and raised our hands up high/we’ll do this till we die/all in favor, say aye.”
Whoa. A direct rip at some unknown ski resort is thrown in, and throws me slightly off. I can relate, having spent a decade in one of those, struggling every day to remain as the bulldozers ate away at the native ground surrounding the resorts. The Hips once made a habit of touring the Rocky Mountain ski areas in a whirlwind string of blazing rock shows. It was in one of these that I saw my first mosh pit break out at a Hips show, which, if you know the band, is sort of comical. Note to self: Find out which obnoxious ski resort Greg had in mind when penning this beautiful balladic number. My guess, selfishly, is Vail. God I hope its Vail. Fuck Vail. Really….
And now for an upping of the previous dose of WHOA, interjected only after a second listen whilst on a mid-review, 10 pm run out to an abandoned military base where I was going to meet up with some amateur exorcists in an effort to walk through long-darkened barracks in search of “hostile demons” for a story that I am writing. Halfway there, the college kids who called me chickened out of having me on hand to chronicle their exploits, a bad sign for those dealing with much harsher demons than that of the local entertainment press, I proffer, as I roll back to the beachside abode and refocus on the task at hand.
The second WHOA moment that I speak of here is not even about the above tangent, however. No, this is about a lyric that I plucked from All In Favor in mid-drive home. There are several characters listed in the course of the song, strange sounding dudes whom a casual listener might think perhaps are just imaginative creations meant to fit the song. But there it is, near the end of All In Favor. Along with “Spider John”, “Pistol Pete” is lyrically named, presumably as a source of nostalgia, and I fucking know Pistol Pete, like far too well! I lived with that cat for two years in a dingy hovel populated by large dogs, baseball players, free-range chickens and various reoccurring personalities of indeterminate criminal status. In fact I have Pistol Pete to thank for introducing me to the band, as well as teaching me how to play guitar. When the wind is right, I can still hear Pete slurring out an affected, angry plea to “play some Stones!” at Hips shows BITD.
He was given the nickname due to his habit of getting trashed and passing out on the band’s Chico porch back in the early 90’s, where he would proceed to forego direct control over his waterworks from time to time to time. I last saw him a year ago participating in a professional whiffle ball game in Pleasanton, and he had not changed a bit. That dude will flip the hell out if her hears this.
And now the seventh song of the seventh record, the title track, Pacific Dust. Starting in space, Pacific Dust, the song, gathers itself gradually, reveals itself initially in tone to be the blood-sister song to Bluhm’s Cow Hollow Blues from his epic solo effort House of Bluhm, until a punching mad trio of synched guitars and Paul Hoaglin’s growling bass drop the karmic hammer, and splattering out in all directions is a surprising cacophony of classic psychedelia, followed by an orderly John Hofer high hat, bass drum place setting. That brief moment of calm gets energetically trumped by a pissed off, resolute-sounding Bluhm urging a deep-toned string of leaving-time explanationaries.
For the past year, the Hips have taken to playing sets specifically inclined towards psychedelic experimentation, and the results have been positively inspiring. This song seems an obvious benefactor of the stripping of the mores of pop/rock or country rock that the band has adhered to for a majority of their history, especially after starting off with a fundamental urge to jam back when they burned their first strings.
Now free once more to improvise, Pacific Dust ranges in mean sweeps and smooth caroms, ultimately feeling like a multi-stage, rocketing space launch.
The chorus of Pacific Dust, the song, comes on like a sudden, swinging, sliding, shirt-tearing, nose smashing street fight. At this point I begin to dance and yell into the otherwise quiet house here on a gloomy day in Monterey. I yell so loud that my old dog, Bear, who is about 95% deaf, bolts up from his rainy day bed and starts howling out of blind allegiance. The cat flies off the bookshelf and takes off in a desperate run for the bed, where he hides underneath, red eyed and worried.
Meanwhile my wife comes running from the kitchen with a piping hot tuna casserole in her mitted hands, a look of concern etched across her face upon entry into my cluttered office. But within seconds of her entry, I’ve got her hopping around with me, rocking out in her apron and pigtails like some Polish hippy chef with a penchant for boogying down with a pile of hot fish meat in hand.
The song has more hooks than a smithy’s tool shed, more changes than the congressional record, more surprises than a Wes Anderson film. It ends in the strangest of fashions, swirling away in a detaching metallic dirge that bends the mind and troubles the air.
And immediately we launch into the pop rock styling of Young Charles Ives. After the lock-step guitars run off a nifty opening riff, this tune takes on a familiar feel. It charges forward at times in the one-two-three syncopation seen before in a pair of older Hips number such as Do it On the Strings, and Tired Wings.
Dressed in prim vocal harmonies, and pressed on at times by guest player Jackie Greene’s light organ work and a moody string bit that suggests a Beatlesesque sensibility, Young Charles Ives is a compelling story song in the strong tradition of Mother Hips story songs. When history turns its narrow beam on this band twenty, fifty, even a hundred years from now, I believe that the lasting characteristic of these musicians will have been their ability to tell intelligent, heartfelt stories of people great and small in such a way that multiple entendres can take the listeners interpretation in a myriad directions.
The Mother Hips, photo by Andrew Quist
tells the tale of a father and son finding musical connectivity together, and ultimately the emptiness of going it alone.
“He came into the house and yelled “how do they make that sound?”/sat down at the piano and he tried/but the music that he captured, outside above the rain/set his mind a reeling/outside the bells kept dealin’” There is a beautifully quiet, orchestral and guitar jangle interlude that lasts for just a few moments near the end that might just well be one of the most impressive, ambitious moments on the entire record.
(Editors note – this and the following song are the only post-Original Listen edits that I am allowing myself.) Freedom is a regular theme in the bands canon, specifically in Bluhm’s work. The eight track, Are You Free is perhaps the kin of “I Can’t Stay”, an excellent, devastating older Hips tune that never made it onto an album release (it was a b-side on the Third Floor Story single) in which the protagonist was a male voice lamenting a former love who he might have seen on the highway.
Are You Free is a pained, yearnful story that mines a similar vein. I was at first quite harsh in my review of this song, perhaps thrown by two instrumental aspects of Are You Free, the drum tempo and a hammy synth fill. But now, after a few more passes at it, those snitty complaints fade away like distant thunder, and it is due to the deeply philosophical weight of the words that Bluhm sings, or rather asks of his muse – the homemaking wife, the one who may not have lived the whole of her potential. “Julie married up and away she did go/her husband has to work/and she’s often at home/everything that she wished for is right here at home/she stares out of the kitchen window/Are you free?”
The tune is led by a very forward break beat expertly laid down by Hofer, who has been called “The Human Metronome” for good reason. The guitars come on fast and mellow, giving way to a Tom Petty-like note pattern that reminds me in a good way of “You Got Lucky”.
Those lyrics strike a thirty-something nerve, and they get even better from there. I am sort of dissapointed that I didn’t really listen to them when I blasted the synth bits that serve to recast parts of the song as an 80’s nod to the Miami Vice soundtrack, which I love by the way, but not as a modern release. And I think that is an important aspect to this song that I did not quite think about or get at first glance. This might actually be the first smartly, subtly purposeful 80’s-era sound that the Hips have attempted, or anyone for that matter. And if you are going to break new ground, why not do it by digging a little in the old ground to see what you can use? Someday, even Civic’s will be classics…
Bandit Boy follows. And you know, I originally wrote here that the song fell short to me. And by doing so, I believe that it did give me a sideways tilt in that first listen. But since then I have listened to it a few times, and I think that I want to amend my first thought on it. This, my friends, is a truly powerful, even deviously mean song with strong, if slightly high concept imagery.
It is an up-tempo, slide heavy guitar rock song with a seriously heavy bottom and a killer breakdown,
There is a very southern rock feel to this song, and post-listen I am left wanting a handlebar mustache, an asspocket full of high wine and a shrink, and I am not sure if that is a good thing. That said, I do think that this song will grow on me, as it already churns with full rock fury and in fact may be one of those songs that comes across way better as a live number than as a studio release, a phenomenon that is not at all uncommon with the Mother Hips.
And finally, the eleventh tune. The closer. The one that will set the tone for the next record, which I am sure that the loyal devotees of the Hips have already started to yearn for. Clocking in at 7:36, Cheer Up Champ is the longest song to grace a Hips record in years. This is a different kind of song, spacey, ethereal, dreamy, and highly polished. Almost “soul” in nature and attitude, it too harkens back to the time before computers and robots and cell phone vibrators. From where I sit, its hard to tell if it’s a ballad, a bed time story, or a movement in psychedelia. Perhaps it is all three. The closest thing that I can think of to it is the song Motorhome. If, that is, Motorhome was taken out of the cottenwood canyons and deposited on the city streets, recast in a blue tone and fueled with a mixture of mescaline and Quaaludes.
There is a searing guitar solo that is fat and smart all at once, and harmonies to spare. This is a great track and an excellent closing number, ala Seaward Song and In This Bliss from past records.
Pacific Dust is a solid, rocking, if ambitious new record by the Mother Hips. This band has not once in their career chosen to stand pat and regurgitate their material. Instead, they have made careers out of shifting gears, attempting to push the boundaries that were pioneered by their own influences while maintaining their signature humility, grace, and eponymous skill. This is a band of men who are comfortable in their own skin, and gaining a sense of self-reflection as they forge ahead. If Kiss The Crystal Flake was a record about the phenomenon of time, then Pacific Dust is a record about making music, and it is a powerful, varied study on the process.
For those looking to see the Hips break out with a mainstream effort that will finally gain them the widespread exposure that they so clearly deserve, I do not think that this is going to be that record. This band is simply (and selfishly, given the state of commercial radio: thankfully) not made for radio, despite the fact that they have, in my opinion, many times over written some of the best rock songs in the past twenty years.
And to that dizzying list they add a few more off of Pacific Dust. Both the title track and White Falcon Fuzz are sick in very healthy ways, and may well serve as contemporary hits after all, although more likely via games like Rock Star or through cinematic soundtracks, for which, by the way, this band is a freaking gold mine. More likely, this record will further connect the far reaches of the audiosphere via hard work out on the long road, and the word of mouth from one fan to the next, earned one show, one record spin at a time, at that perfect time.
Third Floor Story, at long last, gets its place of prominence, though one might argue that the song would have fit better sequentially within earlier records such as Shootout or Part Timer Goes Full. But those times are indeed past, and I am beyond stoked to see it appear on this record. Cheer Up Champ is a stellar new song as well, and many of the others stand out as individually solid new songs.
I cannot help but think that there is here a song, maybe two, that might have been eschewed in favor of some long buried treasures such asLoup Garou, or the now-uncovered but unreleased rippers Desert Song or Mountain Time, or even a few recently released singles such as Childish Dreams, Colonized, or Blue Tomorrow. That may come off as a snitty, fanboy complaint, and I will own that if that is what it is. And who knows what contractual obligations exist therein? And who am I to question anything, anyways?
Pacific Dust moves the Mother Hips legacy forward and makes long, maturing strides musically and lyrically. Most importantly, Pacific Dust is a brilliant, seriously fun record.
As the New Yorker said so succinctly, the Mother Hips “sing it sweet and play it dirty”, to which I might add that they continue to relish in defining themselves on their own terms, with innovative, timeless music.
C.A.
Marina, CA
10-14/15-09
*Note, this letter is in response to a recent story about a tussle between a drinker and a cop at a bar in Basalt, Colorado. The story, by Scott Condon, can be found here: