"Bleach" (1989)

 

"Negative Creep" At the time, for sure, this had its partisans, but I recall the big Sub Pop PR machine tending to lumber more significantly behind Mudhoney's eminently worthy self-titled first album. After Soundgarden, Mudhoney was the band that cognoscenti pegged, ironically or otherwise, as most likely to succeed and deliver them to limousines and the finest crystal (and note: ironic it all turned out to be, just not in the ways intended). As for me, I was busy getting all het up about Tad's God's Balls, which seemed to me then (and now) the ideal shotgun wedding of punk and metal, with no small degree of lovely ecclesiastical white-trash detritus cluttering up the proceedings (hey, head honcho Tad Doyle is from Idaho, after all). All of these albums came out at about the same time, along with product from more or less forgotten entities such as the Fluid, in a shotgun blast of Sub Pop discharge. But of course Bleach is the one that ultimately brands you prescient if you championed it ardently enough and have the documentation to back yourself up when the time comes to apportion credit for foresight. It's good, make no mistake—damn fine sludge all around, in fact. No one I know is arguing against the fact that Sub Pop knew exactly what they were doing in matters of selecting the right bands to record and promote.