5 out of 5

Label: Skin Graft

Produced by: David Barbe, Mount Shasta

You betcher buppie this is hecka five stars.

At first ear-hole gander, Mount Shasta sits comfortably in the early Skin Graft ‘sound’ with its beery vocals, pounding beat, and riffy unwillingness to settle down.  It’s US Maple’s rasp; Dazzling Killmen’s grind; etc.  But somewhere on the album it kicks in that there’s an unusual (for Grafters) consistency to this attack: a backbone that makes each four or five minute song feel complete.  I’ll praise any given Skin Graft group, but as the label boasts the whole no-wave tag, there’s definitely a tendency to zig instead of zag; Mount Shasta, on the other hand, when you’re expecting that zig, they do it, but it’s more like ZIGGA ZIGG ZIGG…

…And then on Mescalero, when you hear the horns struggling through – though adding an actual layer to the song, and not just noise – it becomes clearer that Shasta’s furious boogie is serious business.  The production, similarly, is serious business: Shasta is a maybe odd note on Sugar-producer David Barbe’s resume – plopped amidst other groups like Drive-By Truckers – but it makes you wonder if his impulses didn’t lead to Who’s the Hottie’s subtle restraint, which pushes out the inherent groove and muscle of the songs without undercutting the general VOLUME of it all.  Compare to the Albini-recorded followup, Watch Out, which encouraged more of a rock direction.

Skin Graft is still dropping exciting stuff to this day, but oh to have been cool enough to have been on board to discover discs like this as they happened.  I would’ve been the jerk in the Mount Shasta shirt at the music store, playing this disc every rotation and never failing to push it on some unsuspecting indie kid.