REVIEW: Primus, Antipop (Interscope)
- Matthew Carlin
Back when "Jerry Was a Racecar Driver" hit the MTV airwaves, Primus truly was the oddest rock group on the tube. A pubescent music nerd's wet dream, all three members had the chops of their heroes in Rush, the quirkiest cartoon-voiced lead singer and songs that were just plain weird. They had already won legions of fans in the Bay Area with legendary live shows and two albums on Caroline Records that came before their big label debut, Sailing the Seas of Cheese, but the idea of Les Claypool stomping around stage singing about "John the Fisherman" and a horny cat named Tommy while on tour opening for U2 was about as 'alternative' as music could get in the early-90s.
Alas, the salad days when Primus headlined Lollapalooza are long gone with the festival itself. And Primus-influenced groups like Limp Bizkit and Korn rule the airwaves and incite riots at Woodstock. It is a sad, sad time in music. I digress. What's truly depressing is that Primus is still up to the same exact tricks. In fact the production on Antipop sounds exactly like their first studio album, Frizzle Fry, right down to the thin, snappy snare drum, the Stewart Copeland-style sibilant high hats and Larry Lalonde's psychedelic waves of guitar. Only the tunes aren't as inventive (since Claypool has been writing the same four songs since 1990) and the lyrics are getting stupider.
'I am Antipop/I'll run against the grain till the day I drop/I am the Antipop/the man you cannot stop,' Claypool belts on the title track. I won't even bother pointing out the irony of such a statement given the aforementioned prevalence of Primus-y bands littering MTV now. Other lyrical gems on Antipop include: 'The best of times the worst of times/the times you can't ignore./Sometimes you bite the bullet/and flip flop on the floor.' (from "Mama Didn't Raise No Fool"); 'Lacquer Head knows but one desire/Lacquer Head sets his skull on fire/Lacquer Head knows no in betweens/huffin' on bags of gasoline' (from the appropriately-titled "Lacquer Head" which was actually produced by Limp Bizkit jerk-in-chief Fred Durst).
Discounting Claypool's awful lyrics, the first few tunes on Antipop do rock like old Primus. Although not as well, since Claypool's basslines used to be much more interesting. And drummer Brain, who played some truly incredible, inventive stuff with Bill Laswell and guitar maniac Buckethead in Praxis, sounds uncomfortably similar to former Primus trapsman Tim 'Herb' Alexander. They even cover "The Heckler" from their debut live album from 1989, just in case you forgot they've been working the same shtick for ten years.
By track seven Antipop just becomes tedious. The songs start to blend into a haze of Pink Floyd pomp, cheesy Stanley Clarke bass antics and weak metal stomps. Despite guest producers like Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello (who also lends his buzz saw guitar stylings) and drumming legend Stewart Copeland (!!!), Primus just ain't what it used to be. The one exception being the truly fantastic "Coattails of a Dead Man" which boasts an appearance by Tom Waits on mellotron and vocals, who also gets credit as producer for the track. A dirgy, nightmarish waltz with trippy vocals by Tricky-collaborator Martina Topley-Bird, the only lousy part of this one is Claypool's vocals.
