REVIEW: Primus Tales from the Punchbowl (Interscope/Atlantic)

- Martin Bate

That last Primus album, Pork Soda is almost platinum and that they enjoyed a perch at the top of the Lollapalooza tree is one of the most pleasantly surprising success stories of the 90's so far. That so many people would latch on to their skewed sense of humour, timing, musicianship and song-writing just seemed pretty unlikely. What's even more amazing is that despite their success, the usual slew of imitators have failed to appear. To all intents and purposes, Primus are still one of a kind.

Recorded after a break to indulge in each other's own thing to stop themselves going insane (like, how would anyone be able to tell !?) the quaintly named Tales from the Punchbowl is Primus following up their most successful album to date by, well, just carrying on as normal - basically looking at the world through cartoon eyes so that everything becomes alternately funny and eerie.

So there's the now familiar Primus brittle-funk of "Del Davis Tree Farm" and "Year of the Parrot" - the latter of which takes a dig at plagarism with lines like "I've seen the likes of Kate Bush/And Van Morrison/Teaching the parrots to sing". Yep, I think we know who you're talking about.

Not that Primus reference points are any less obvious - their Residents, Tom Waits and Frank Zappa influences are plain for all to see - but it's the way they blend them together, throwing in anything else that comes to hand that makes them so unique.

So we've got our Primus funk, along with a moody one, "On the Tweek Again", all stalking bass and deserted streets, and the usual dose of irreverent humour with "Space Farm" (90 seconds of animal and ray-gun noises over a Looney Tunes bass line) and the little sea-shanty instrumental "Captain Shiner". What else we got ?

Well, there's the first single "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver", which throws Country and Western into the calculus and is a story about a girl called Wynona and her unusual pet (You were expecting something else ?) ; there's "Southbound Pachyderm", an ominous, at times almost soulful, brood; we've got "Hellbound 17 1/2 (Theme from)", a jaunty theme waiting for a movie to happen; "De Anza Jig", the natural successor to Pork Soda's "The Air is Getting Slippery", a banjo-led oompah telling us of the likes of "Julie Tolentino, the dancing Filipino" and "Ol' Flouncin' Freddy"; the pure Residents of Glass Sandwich; the pummeling "Professor Nutbutter's House of Treats" with the eerie refrain of "It's alright to fear the worm" making you feel uneasy even if you're not sure why; and "Mrs Blaileen" which is a similar tale to Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" except where the latter was an overblown rock anthem, Primus' understated funk lends the whole thing a much more unsettling air. All of course, performed with the usual impeccable musicianship, where you don't have to be a music afficionado to appreciate the spiralling, clattering rhythm the three of them knock out effortlessly.

So, business as usual then!

This is Primus stream-lining their sound rather than adding a great deal to it. Conscious of this, bassist/singer Les Claypool states that "Seriously, we gotta get some horns and back-up singers in their soon!". But until then, there's a new episode of Primus's world to get lost in.