MELVINS - WORKING WITH GOD (NEW ALBUM!!!!!!!)

[buddy holiday]

^ interesting info. thank you for sharing.

[(the) Razor]

Hmmm might check it out. Some positive feedback

[el gep]

This one seems to be a good one.
I like "I Fuck Around". The "yeach" (Dale?) makes me laugh out loud everytime, it's very funny!
There are some good thrashy weird Rock in there, even if some riffs sound a little familiar... Well, Buzz is Buzz, that's his identity. And that's allright.

There is a good cartoon / "video game going nuts" vibe, also a "funny dream going sometimes-nightmarish-but-not-totally" feel.
And the sound... is real cool!

Whatever: good work!
Have to dig more.

[))))((((]

Was peeping to see if the new album dropped on iTunes yet and found some insider info from Buzz himself breaking down each of the tracks.

An excellent find!!! Thanks for posting that. It's fascinating hearing about Buzzo's writing process and the thoughts behind the music. I wish we had more of these sort of interviews or facts being discussed about their songs. Im sure we would all be surprised by such revelations about some of the songs we love so much.

[amazonAMAZON]

Really cool record. I'm coming around to the covers. The originals are all awesome.

Even though they both keep slipping out that Dillard can't do the complex time stuff, I think the groove on "Negative No No" is plenty tricky.

"Boy Mike" is my favorite so far. Sounds like half Basses Loaded half Maggot.

This version of "Hot Fish" sounds great. I'll have to see if I go back to that Flipper EP how they compare in the long run.

Great find on the iTunes comments, thanks!

[JFKC]

Was peeping to see if the new album dropped on iTunes yet (even though I own the silver vinyl) and found some insider info from Buzz himself breaking down each of the tracks. Not sure if this has already been posted:

I F**k Around
“This came out of soundcheck. They’d go, ‘Can you do your vocal check?’ and I’d start in with ‘Round, round, fuck around, I fuck around,’ to the tune of the Beach Boys song. It always got a laugh out of people. And then we eventually thought we gotta record it. So I sat down and wrote lyrics for it. Melvins 1983 is where that kind of stuff really comes to light, because we all have the same kind of sense of humour, which my wife says is perpetually stuck in eighth grade. Which is true.”
 
Negative No No
“I wrote these lyrics while driving around in the car, listening to the demo. What I'll do is I have my notebook with me and when I come upon something, I'll pull over and just write it out, right there on the side of the road. I do that all the time. You couldn’t work that way on public transpo. Sitting on the bus singing out loud is not really going to work. You’d be beaten up or considered insane, which is probably not far from the truth.”
 
Bouncing Rick
“This was the nickname we had for our high school biology teacher. Me and Dillard had all kinds of names for people at the high school. This guy bounced around when he talked—I think it was out of nervousness—so we called him Bouncing Rick. But we’re the only ones who called him that. So as soon as I said, ‘Bouncing Rick’, Dillard knew who I was talking about. I don’t know that the song is really about him, though. I think it would be more about the challenges of a second date.”
 
Caddy Daddy
“People think this is a golf reference, but it’s actually not. It’s Cadillacs. I wouldn't write a song about a golf caddy—I've never had one. But I've never had a Cadillac, either. When I lived in San Francisco, I saw a guy walking through the Fillmore District with a baseball hat on that said ‘Caddy Daddy’ on it, and I wrote it down. That was probably 30 years ago, and I've had it ever since. But the song isn’t about that. It’s more about thinking you’re smarter than you really are.”
 
Brian, The Horse-Faced Goon
“The first part is a song that we came up with a long time ago. We used to sing it exactly like that—‘Brian, The Horse-Faced Goon’, trying to imitate Ethel Merman. So we’ve had that version for years and years. And then the second one is about a Florida kid shooting dope in a hurricane. Dale wrote the music for that one, which is the new song. The hardest part was figuring out how I was going to fit the phrase ‘Brian, The Horse-Faced Goon’ into the lyrics, which I did.”
 
Boy Mike
“This might be one of my favourites. The way it started out and the way it ended up was tremendously different. And I really like the ending on that song—I think it's really fucking cool. I think it sounds really weird and creepy. I couldn't say exactly what that one's about, but Boy Mike is not a real person. At first I was thinking it could be about a microphone, but I don’t think it is. It’s one of those songs that ends up far surpassing your expectations. I love when that happens.”
 
F**k You
“This is our Harry Nilsson cover, which was a no-brainer. His song was called ‘You’re Breakin’ My Heart’. According to the documentary about him, he wrote it about his ex-wife. Nilsson was a strange cat—he never played live. This was a song that I've wanted to cover for a long time, and I changed the lyrics to be as offensive as possible. We really liked the beginning with us screaming, ‘Fuck you!’ so we decided to isolate that for the second song. If you take the two ‘Brian’ tracks, ‘Boy Mike’ and the two ‘F**k Yous’, it’s like a nice little EP in the middle of the album.”
 
The Great Good Place
“I think this is Dale's favourite song on the record. I might be wrong, but I think the title is a reference to the freaks at Andy Warhol’s Factory who thought that they’d found a place where they could do whatever they wanted, but then Warhol ends up getting blasted. I might have had that in mind, but it’s not directly about that. And then there’s that saying along the lines of ‘If you let everyone in, you let in madness, too.’ So you’ve got to be more specific about your guest list.”
 
Hot Fish
“The music for this one was written by Trevor Dunn, and I wrote the lyrics. We actually wrote this song for Flipper. We did a limited-edition EP with those guys playing on it, but we decided to redo the song and put it on this record. I can’t think of a band that has had a bigger impact on us than Flipper. The title comes from seeing them at a club in San Francisco in the ’80s called the Covered Wagon. In the back, there was a kitchen with a deep fryer. Those guys had this fish made out of metal that was about the size of a bowling ball. They’d drop it in the fryer until it was red hot and then throw water on it and carry it onstage screaming, ‘Hot fish! Hot fish!’ I never forgot that. The funny thing is, when I brought it up to those guys, they didn’t remember it.”

Hund
“This is a song that I wrote for [Buzz and Dale’s side project] Crystal Fairy, but we never got to record it. So we revamped it and did it with Melvins 1983. It has some pretty hard guitar-playing on it, as far as the soloing goes—that's about as hard a guitar solo as I'll ever do. But the song is kind of a multifaceted nightmare—it's got a lot of parts to it. Mike and Dale did a really good job working this out.”
 
Goodnight Sweet Heart
“We’ve been wanting to do this on an album forever. We used to do this song with the Big Business guys—we’d do it as the last song of the night. Then I met one of the guys from Sha Na Na when I was golfing at one of the little par-three courses I play. He was there all the time, so I got to be friends with him. He told me the reason they loved doing that song last is because it was the shortest song they did in their whole set. So we open the record with a Beach Boys song and close it with a ’50s doo-wop song. It just seems right.”

thanks for posting this, I love it

[the bloat]

Nice to hear Buzz’s guitar again. I haven’t heard those deep, guttural chugging sounds since Hold it In. This album is rippin’. I’ve only played it a couple times and it seems solid. Peppered with some jokey stuff. First impression is that the boyz are just having some fun and blowing off steam.

[))))((((]

"Boy Mike" is my favorite so far. Sounds like half Basses Loaded half Maggot.

Yes! That one gave me strong The Maggot vibes too.

Hund
"This is a song that I wrote for Crystal Fairy, but we never got to record it."

I wonder if Buzz has any other Crystal Fairy songs knocking around which he could redeploy with Melvins. Although personally i still think of the Crystal Fairy record as a one-off Melvins release with Teri singing.

[CoryCory]

It's really weird seeing Buzz go full deep dive and explicitly talk about songs like this, what they're about, etc. I honestly liked the weird vagueness and using your imagination when hearing the lyrics. Buzz writing a song about second dates is going over my head in ways I couldn't imagine

[))))((((]

It's really weird seeing Buzz go full deep dive and explicitly talk about songs like this, what they're about, etc.

I know, i don't recall him doing this before or being so open about his process. Usually i tend to see him give quite straight forward, maybe jokey off-hand remarks that shut down the discussion when people ask about things like that. Personally this type of stuff is what i love to hear about more than a musician's thoughts on baseball or politics or whatever. It's so interesting. I'd love to hear him talk more about his notes with words/phrases and titles in them. To see how he collects them and how he may go back through those old notes.

[moose]

Even though they both keep slipping out that Dillard can't do the complex time stuff, I think the groove on "Negative No No" is plenty tricky.

This.

[moose]

"Boy Mike" is my favorite so far. Sounds like half Basses Loaded half Maggot.

Yes! That one gave me strong The Maggot vibes too.

Mine came today!

Yup was def getting a We all love Judy feel here.

[))))((((]

I keep getting the line from 'Hund':

"Animal, animal, you're just..... FOOD!!"

Stuck in my head. One of the best songs on this thing.

[119]

Too hokey for my taste.

[Helen83]

That Brian Goon Face ditty is BOSS.