War Pussy
Melvins formed in Montesano, Washington in 1983. Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover have been the only constants, the bass player slot functioning as what Record Collector called "a revolving door" and what Osborne himself treated as an ongoing artistic experiment rather than a personnel problem. By 2016 that experiment had produced six distinct bassists across a single record. Basses Loaded, released on Ipecac Recordings on June 3, 2016, is the 21st Melvins album. It features Steve McDonald of Redd Kross, Jared Warren of Big Business, JD Pinkus of the Butthole Surfers, Trevor Dunn of Mr. Bungle and Fantomas, Krist Novoselic of Nirvana, and Crover himself, who moved from drums to bass for the four tracks recorded under the Melvins 1983 lineup, bringing back original drummer Mike Dillard. Produced by the Melvins and Toshi Kasai at Sound of Sirens Studio. MLB.com streamed the full album ahead of its release, which remains the most unusual promotional placement in sludge metal history.
War Pussy is track nine, with Steve McDonald on bass. It was first released on the War Pussy EP in 2015 alongside three other tracks that also appear on Basses Loaded, all recorded with McDonald, who had become the band's live bassist. The Quietus called it "single 'War Pussy'" and noted that "the pop-punk pioneer can spread sludge around with the best of them." The title is characteristic Melvins: confrontational on its face, funny on reflection, and ultimately less interesting than the riff underneath it. Osborne's guitar has been doing this since 1983, compressing blues and punk and noise into a sound that is identifiably his regardless of who is playing bass or drums around it.
"More is more! As hard as it might be to believe, all of these bass players contribute something of their own to Basses Loaded which gives the whole album a good kick right in the ass."
Ten years ago today Basses Loaded was released. The Melvins have released three more albums since. Osborne is sixty-one. Crover is fifty-eight. They are still the only permanent members, still recording, still playing two-hour sets in clubs that hold three hundred people and festivals that hold thirty thousand, still insisting on exactly the same terms. The bass player slot remains a revolving door. War Pussy is not an overlooked song. The Melvins are not an overlooked band, not among anyone who knows them. They are, however, a band that mainstream culture has never quite known what to do with, which amounts to the same thing. From overlooked to essential: that is still the distance this archive is trying to close.