Stereogum —
On many of the Melvins’ greatest songs, drummer Dale Crover is really the soloist. Listen to the opening drum clatter on “Hooch” that kicks off their landmark 1993 album Houdini, ham-fisted but hyper-precise, a weird architectural construction that takes mere seconds for Crover to build and then topple spectacularly before our eyes. Listen to those woodblock thunks on “Lizzy,” which glint like distant lights in a dark, dismal swamp. The Melvins’ lyrics are famously inscrutable, and there’s the sense in their best music that the drum part is as likely to carry the song’s “meaning” as the words. Crover is such a marvelously expressive drummer that his decision to go kit-to-kit with Big Business’s Coady Willis during the band’s acclaimed late-2000s run scanned as an enormous risk — but taking enormous risks is something the Melvins have been great at for their entire career, from their origins as the slowest band in Montesano, WA to their current status as a beloved cult band whose entire career feels like a wilderness period.
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