Weedeater - God Luck and Good Speed
Speaking of Steve Albini, he recorded God Luck and Good Speed (Southern Lord, 2007) by Wilmington, NC’s Weedeater. Vocalist/bassist Dave “Dixie” Collins has done time in heavyweights Buzzoven, Bongzilla, and Sourvein. Thus, Weedeater unsurprisingly brings more downtuned filth, this time in the NOLA sludge/doom style of Eyehategod, Down, and so on.
God Luck and Good SpeedGimme Back My BulletsGimme Back My Bullets (Lynyrd Skynyrd)
This record is about riffs, not songs. Collins’ voice sounds shot and is basically sandpaper icing. The most interesting tracks are the aberrations – a lovely banjo/acoustic bass number (“Alone”), a quiet piano ditty (“Willow”), and a bulked-up cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Gimme Back My Bullets” (from the album of the same name, which celebrates its 32nd birthday this Saturday).
But if the heart of the record is sound, it’s a good one – big, bluesy, almost genial. The booming drum sound recalls the one Albini captured on High on Fire’s Blessed Black Wings. He said this about the recording sessions:
The band Weedeater just did an album here that was scheduled to take 5 days, but they knocked it out in 4, and I think we were done by 8pm every day. That’s a pretty easy session. If you’ve ever seen them, you know that they have a unique and gnarly sound, but that sound is built-in, and I didn’t have to do anything special. That one just sort of fell off the truck complete.
This quote comes from the most incredible Internet forum thread I’ve ever seen (next to Hot Women of the Israeli Military). In it, Albini holds court on a poker forum about things rock- and poker-related. The thread is incredibly long (66 pages!) and eventually gets so lame that Albini starts posting only in haikus. But damned if each time I visit it, two hours of my life don’t disappear.
God Luck and Good Speed is available physically from Southern Lord and The End, and digitally from Amazon.
