Oh my, the phase shifting of the stereo separation is definitely a bit unruly on this unexpected cover of the Mudhoney track. But that's all in a day's work for Brit proto-shoegazers Spacemen 3, whose famous working credo, "taking drugs to make music to take drugs to," would seem to make this another obvious candidate for my personal drug song hall of fame. And so that may be. But it's all by implication here, as the Mudhoney song has never struck me as particularly drug-oriented. If anything, it's more about dread (a kind of druggie experience in its own right, I suppose). Still, when you listen to the way Spacemen 3 proceeds here, with the slow-moving overheated tangle of raw sound that opens it (and the obnoxious phase-shifting, not recommended for headphones, unless, you know), moving inexorably to the big smash-up at the center, "when tomorrow hits," you know there's more at stake here than just another day. Nobody's laughing. There's nothing funny at all. It comes at the tail end of the band's career, from an album (Recurring) already divided by auteurs and poised to fly off in manifold directions. The personality conflicts and resentments rubbed raw by this point, which may be an inadvertent source of the all-important frisson that quietly powers this. Something makes it work for me like nothing else of theirs. I'm down with the rest of the catalog, and with all the various projects that came shooting and spinning out of it too—Spiritualized, Spectrum, the Darkside, others—but this was the point I climbed on board, late, and it tends to be the first place to which I return when I'm in the mood. There's not anything else quite like it.
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