Do you know how long it takes for an act to get their latest album pressed on vinyl?
Remember, this was the product the record industry tried to kill, before the record industry died a sudden and self-inflicted death. Nobody would download mp3 files of music when they are so used to owning a physical product, or so the major labels thought. For the last two decades, as happened in the early days of rock’n’roll, it has been the pop single that takes precedence, something to put on while you do the dishes or go for a jog.
It makes it rather tough for new acts to break through with an album. Look at the paucity of real A List stars from the current era: Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift actively compete with each other, by the use of spreadsheets, to track concert tickets and streams; Billie Eilish has to deal with stalkers and being away from LA on her world tours; ‘the new boring’ ushered in by Sheeran means that record labels are playing it safe.
Lizzo and Stormzy (who licences music to a major label that he puts out on his Merky imprint) stand out for obvious reasons, but even they seem to have been told to make music for the marketplace. Indie is where it’s at. The 1975 are on their own label, after all, and they are the big draw of festival season, with the financial heft to tour arenas and put on outdoor gigs with a massive set.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying that the first two albums by Grant Lee Buffalo are now reissued on clear vinyl by Chrysalis Records. Contemporaries of REM (with whom they toured) when they moved from indie act to major-label rockers on Warner, the trio’s debut album fuzzy and second album Mighty Joe Moon are ripe for rediscovery three decades after their release.
The band took their name from frontman Grant Lee Philips. Sideman Paul Kimble produced both albums, which originally came out on the Slash imprint. By album two, they were signed to Reprise Records, which was founded by Frank Sinatra and was sold to Warner soon after; Michael Buble’s albums now come out on the imprint.
On The Shining Hour, the opening track of Fuzzy, Grant’s voice – which has hints of Tim Booth from James – joins an acoustic bass and brushed drums. The melodic chorus grabs the listener as well, and a guitar solo after the second chorus completely changes the arrangement. This is what was known in 1993 as Modern Rock, the genre birthed by REM and propelled by a mix of British indie acts and American scenesters around the country. As a guide, the Modern Rock charts were dominated that year by Jesus Jones, New Order, Depeche Mode and, at the end of the year, the nine-week chart-topper Into Your Arms from The Lemonheads, which added Evan Dando’s Cobainish handsomeness to an addictive melody.
The title track of Fuzzy has emerged as the most popular, with 10m Spotify streams. Perhaps it’s the beginner-friendly acoustic guitar chug, the sliding electric guitar solo, the simplicity of the lyrics (‘here we are in our car, driving down the street’) or the image of the ‘dead bouquet’. It is certainly of its time, like Fade Into You or No Rain or More Than Words: none more 1993.
Whereas the Pixies separated soft bits and loud bits depending on which bit of the song they were in, GLB tend to blend them together: there’s a bit in Jupiter and Teardrop that reminds me of when Johnny Greenwood slashes his electric guitar just before the chorus of Creep (another 1993 classic). That song’s lyrics include words like ‘sweetheart on parole’, ‘sheer denial’ and ‘lovers in the barrio’ (which gives the song its plot), as well as a reference to ‘Jackie Wilson’s Lonely Teardrops’. ‘Bring my 38 caliber’ lays bare the fact that Teardrop is a man not to be loved.
The lyrical aspect of the album reveals itself on Wish You Well: ‘My soul receives another blow from the flashlight of the city hate…Even the jester is drummin’ up votes’. Even the word ‘propagandacid’ appears; that sort of opacity would attract fans of Michael Stipe or Frank Black (Black Francis as he was then). Elsewhere, there’s fatalism on The Hook (‘You and I we’re gonna fall’) and an update of Little Red Riding Hood on Soft Wolf Tread (‘As a sirloin steak to a pitbull chained up’). Grace, which like Jeff Buckley’s song doesn’t mention the title in its lyric, has Grant describing Houdini’s death as a metaphor for dying before getting old.
Side B begins with Stars n’ Stripes (‘and their swastikas’), where Grant hits a falsetto on the line ‘engines purr up above’ and describes a country just as confused in 1993 as it is in 2023. Presaging those Capitol rioters with their livefeeds, he sings ‘Got you on my Handycam’ on a long fadeout. America Snoring continues the criticism: ‘Did ya see it on TV?...They want to legislate the womb!’
Grant then heads to a Dixie Drug Store, down in New Orleans, which sounds like a Lou Reed song thanks to its loping V-IV-I chord progression and the soirée with a lady that the narrator enjoys; the Genius.com lyric sheet lists 17 verses, and it’s the densest bit of text printed on the vinyl packaging. Grant’s delivery comes off like that of Reed or Paul Westerberg of alternative rock darlings The Replacements, with the same just-about-thereness of pitch, but very strong in tone.
The album is definitely more alternative than mainstream, much like closing track You Just Have To Be Crazy, with another swaying Neil Youngish melody and arrangement. It’s the sort of album that boasts of the writer’s record collection, which is something to celebrate in a world before infinite jukeboxes gave everyone the right to be a snob. In those days, snobbery cost more than ten bucks a month.
Mighty Joe Moon has Joey Peters credited with drums, as well as ‘tumbuk, tambourine, tablas, maracas, marimba, shakers, acquired hunks of metal’, and there’s also cello, pedal steel, dobro, pump organ, mandolin and banjo. Boys with their toys! There are also errors, at least on my copy, which print the minute-long, banjo-led Last Days of Tecumseh as ‘0:02’ and state on the record that the year of release is ‘2003’. Twenty years out!!
The opening track Lone Star Song, unlike The Shining Hour on Fuzzy, explodes from the first bar with a tremolo-laden electric guitar. It’s about the Waco siege, and David Koresh gets a namecheck, as does the TV guide. Maybe touring with REM rubbed off on Grant Lee Phillips and his band, with even more opaqueness in the lyrics to the title track and the chugger Side By Side (‘there’s dissension in the soup lines’).
Perhaps copying Nightswimming, there’s a richness to Mockingbirds to underscore how ‘overwhelmed’ the narrator is. Once again, Grant deploys his falsetto to make the chorus tough to sing along with; alternative, not mainstream. Yet the chorus of Honey Don’t Think has a wonderful melody line to complement the lyric: ‘Help me heal these scars’, begs Grant’s narrator.
There are echoes of Fuzzy’s closing track on the acoustic campfire singalong It’s The Life (‘you have created’), which seems to have a 12-string guitar anchoring it, and Lady Godiva and Me. All three of those songs are in the key of D-flat. There’s a callback to Wish You Well on the nonsense word ‘halleluhoodwink’ on the confident Sing Along, which namechecks serial killer John Wayne Gacy and Muhammed Ali. I hear a lot of Eddie Vedder’s yarling on that track, which is apt given the album came out in late 1994, a time when Pearl Jam rivalled REM as the biggest alternative rock’n’roll band. Happiness is a rumbling tune seemingly influenced by both those bands, although it would fit on Fuzzy too.
The power ballad Rock of Ages, which has a massive long fade, ends Mighty Joe Moon, an album which failed to chart on the Billboard 200 but made the UK top 30.
Fuzzy and Mighty Joe Moon are available on clear vinyl on March 24