Hairway to Steven

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As you descend into Hairway to Steven, Butthole Surfers' last studio recording before their ascent to major-label... status, there are few handles to orient you. You get dropped, headlong, into Paul Leary's moaning, shrieking guitar, Gibby Haynes's megaphone-grown growl, and the thundering two-drummer rhythms that throb and contort this classic 1988 mind-bender. There are no song titles, and as for the songs themselves, they're layered so thick that teasing even a thick strand from any of them is a task. In the late 1980s, when they recorded Hairway (and Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac, Rembrandt Pussyhorse, and Locust Abortion Technician), the Buttholes were in the midst of an endless road show full of freakish displays--Gibby with clothespins on his nipples, Gibby shredding feather pillows on stage amidst pounding strobes, the ever-present mix of sex-change films and naked women dancers gyrating as the band screamed through their set. Hairway catches the sensory overload of it, the fire walk over structure and total chaos, the incipient humor of what was a fantastic, outrageous, vitally important stage in the career of one of punk's most whacked bands. And dig the fifth cut, the single the Buttholes could never have gotten any credit for in the S&L drenched 1980s, with Gibby doing some bouncy "Nah nah nah's" and "Hey, hey, hey's" and believably opining, "Well all of our friends, baby / They're going insane, now." --Andrew Bartlett

Product Description

The final album for the Surfers' legendary run on Touch and Go got a reception probably not even the band figured on -- lead reviews in major music magazines, increasingly higher profiles, and more. As it is, though, Hairway is actually a touch lazy in comparison to the previous releases, sometimes sounding almost all too normal. When it connects, though, Steven works wonders, whether continuing in the punk/psychedelic fusion vein of the past or exploring a gentler, tuneful side. The lengthy opener "Jimi" is the album's high note, and as one might guess from the title it's something of a tribute to Hendrix -- at least, if "Third Stone From the Sun" sounded like it was recorded in a sewer tunnel and was even more gone than it already was. Haynes' alternately deep and hyper-high-pitched vocals work perfectly against Leary's searing, crazed guitar noises, while the Pinkus/Coffey rhythm section lays down a massive beat. Everything concludes with deceptive peacefulness: acoustic guitar, tweeting birds, sounds of bowling, and the like. Other highlights include "I Saw an X-Ray of a Girl Passing Gas," a relatively straightforward, mostly acoustic-plus-rhythm section number sung clearly (!) by Haynes, and the mock live recording "John E. Smokes," with Haynes often sounding like a rural preacher gone mad. The humming guitar buzz of "Backass" and the quick blast of "Fart Song" concludes Steven with vim. As a final note, the song titles themselves can't be found anywhere on the release -- instead, and quite notoriously, a series of cartoon drawings stand in for them. Some are fairly calm, but most show things like nude women displaying their butts and rabbits taking dumps on deer. Juvenile? Of course, but the Butthole Surfers never pretended to be nice and sweet. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide