Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Arts & Entertainment

Movie Review
"An Ideal Husband"
Killing us softly with his rapier wit and exquisite profile, Rupert Everett upstages Oscar Wilde.
By Stephanie Zacharek
[06/25/99]

Movie Review
"Big Daddy"
Adam Sandler is cinema's nicest loudmouthed jerk.
By Mary Elizabeth Williams
[06/25/99]

Music Review
Sharps & flats
Lyle Lovett and His Large Band offer a bracing live set of cosmopolitan country -- and an alternative to all that Nashville pap.
By Seth Mnookin
[06/24/99]

Column
Big success on the small screen
Director Alan Taylor ("Palookaville") makes the leap to television -- and hits a high note with his episode of "The Sopranos."
By Michael Sragow
[06/24/99]

Standup for your blights
George Carlin talks about Littleton jokes, white-yuppie cocksuckers and why he still loves his BMW.
By Geoff Edgers
[06/23/99]

Complete archives for Arts & Entertainment

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Guitar Wolf "Jet Generation" Matador

According to the warning sticker on the cover of "Jet Generation," the band's third U.S. release, the record is the loudest ever made, precision-mastered to fry the indie-rock nation's tender cochleae. My home stereo doesn't measure decibels, so I'm not able to quantitatively verify that boast. But it sure as hell feels loud: Guitar Wolf work with that strain of pure, essentially unbearable volume that makes the nerves in your fingertips crackle.

"Jet Generation" is the band's best-produced album to date. At the start, five brain-melters fuse drums, vocals and treble-cranked guitar into razor-sharp steel wool. After that, Guitar Wolf steps off the volume a bit. On "Cosmic Space Girl" you can actually discern the biker-rock dynamics that ground the balls-out assault. But then it's back to "Kaminari One" -- which sounds like the Stooges setting off M-80s in the Death Star's trash compactor -- and the Spinal Tap-ish eleven of "Roaring Blood."

You can always turn it down, of course, but Guitar Wolf actually sounds worse at a comfortable volume level. The quality disappears, and every song starts to sound like a distant-cousin bootleg or a dying dishwasher. If it ain't hurtin', it ain't workin'.

As for Guitar Wolf's message, the only thing I can really say is that whatever it is, it's really loud. On the back of the CD, two band members pose in shiny leather, flaunting their duck's-ass hairdos like they're the missing link between '50s greasers and 21st century cyberpunks. Maybe, in juxtaposing originals like "Teenage UFO" and "Cyborg Kids" with a guttural cover of Eddie Cochrane's "Summertime Blues," the Wolves are making a statement about old-school juvenile delinquency as the antidote for computer-age dehumanization. But for the most part, Guitar Wolf is a band that would rather spray it than say it -- they know they can raise a better fuss and raise a bigger holler just by letting meaning itself burn up in one huge jet-engine whoooooosh.
salon.com | June 25, 1999

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

  Get a printer-friendly version

  E-mail a friend about this article

  Backflip this article to find it again

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon