Melvins “Working with God”
MELVINS – WORKING WITH GOD
Ipecac, 2021
Rating: 63/100
Best Song: Boy Mike
Working with God is not a great album for Melvins. Too bad, because from a band like this one always expects the best. Too bad because on the record those three or four serious pieces are devastating. The rest is prick or crap. A bit of Zappa-style if you want, without that technical substratum and artistic colour of Mr. Minchiatanta and his inventive Mothers although.
It’s okay, it’s about the Melvins, 33 albums over the last 34 years, not really a band keeping things in the drawers. It starts with a cover in little disguise of the Beach Boys, I Get Around becomes I Fuck Around, amused, brash, played well. Cool.
Melvins 2021
The level rises with the first two original songs, charged and loud as Melvins DNA should. And then all the work goes ups and downs, a rollercoaster amidst jokes of a few seconds and remarkable peaks. I have no doubt that jokes make them laugh, but it ticks like a bit of wasted time in the end. The more when you find yourself a bombshell like Boy Mike and wonder why you had to come there listening to much else.
Then a second cover in disguise, You’re Breaking My Heart by Harry Nilsson. It becomes Fuck You, musically way less successful than the previous cover. The meaning lays in transforming an over-sweetened song into a fuck you song, and if one does not know that it is a cover, it all remains a bit irrilevant. Then the final pieces, where Hund emerges amidst weaker ideas.
So, if Buzzo and his associates spared themselves the pricks and craps, they would only do musical jewelery.
Too bad, is Melvin’s Working with God a wasted opportunity? They will laugh at it by shrugging, ready to mess everyone up as soon as possible, on stage. They are the Melvins in the end, and always will.
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