Bitch Magnet "Bitch Magnet"
Pioneering '80s Noise-mongers get a career retrospective
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This trio of Ohio introspective noise-mongers began where hardcore punk left off in the mid 80s, then expanded the complex scope of their sound and laid foundations for what would eventually end up as post-rock, and the artier end of grunge by the time they had split in 1990.
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Superchunk, Don Caballero, Battles, Mogwai & At the Drive In all seemed to be tuned in and have taken cues, and they eventually scored a couple of entries on the UK and European Indie singles charts. Their influence on what followed in rock seems clear when you hear them, despite not being name-checked as often as contemporaries like Fugazi and Big Black. Despite at their best achieving sounds that are colossal, volatile, aggressive and complex; and also entirely worthy of reappraisal
This boxed re-release of their long out of print albums goes some way to compiling their complete output, comprising their three influential albums in full and a brief selection of previously unreleased alternate takes. 1988’s Debut mini album ‘Star Booty’ sees the band already expanding ambitiously on their hardcore blueprint, with occasional threads of Wire or Joy Division on songs like ’Sea of Pearls’ and ‘Hatpins’. This brief opening salvo impresses but certainly shows more promise than is finally delivered. Pleasingly raw, but even it’s slightly tinny production not quite able to flatten or dampen the power and dynamics ingrained into the material.
No such issues on the far weightier ‘Umber’ from 1988, which captures the distillation of the band at their most accessible, varied and vital. Perversely, one may even possibly call it a pop album; albeit a particularly ferocious and complex one. Leading the charges of short sharp bursts of power with the likes of ‘Motor’, ‘Goat-Legged Country God’ and the unpredictable time shifts in ‘Navaho Ace’, they solidly cast their dynamic sound - not just with the quiet/loud parallel of contemporaries The Pixies, but this being Bitch Magnet, the quiet bits are hushed near silences, juxtaposed with their counterpoints, which resemble planets colliding. Mojo magazine recently named it ‘one of the great lost albums you must own’. In its potent re-mastered form, that argument is even weightier.
It’s entirely fitting that Steve Albini was at the helm for 1990’s swan song ‘Ben Hur’. Moving further out to a harsher sounding left field, and ensuring that any traces of commercial headway had been ironed out, ‘Ben Hur’ is largely instrumental in content; save for a few scarcely audible interjections purposefully drowned in the mix. Everything here has Albini’s sonically raw and violent trademarks writ large all over it. It’s a wholly complimentary partnership, mirroring closely in sound the work Albini was about to undertake with The Wedding Present on their similarly dark and explosive ‘Seamonsters’ recordings the following year. The band here are obviously moving out into then uncharted, and innovative territory.
Six short months after this final album’s creation the band quietly split up and went their separate ways, mostly contributing to other artist’s equally leftfield musical projects leaving their early explorations for others to follow. The band reformed to play the All Tomorrow’s Parties xmas festival in the UK late in 2011, and tours of the UK, Europe and Asia are to follow. So in accompanying this excellently packaged re-release, here is a reanimated force with seemingly a lot still in the arsenal.
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