BUTTHOLE SURFERS

Psychic… Powerless… Another Man’s Sac / Rembrandt Pussyhorse / PCPPEP (Matador)

Let’s get it out of the way immediately: If the Butthole Surfers were active today, they’d be cancelled sooner than you could say, “I’m outraged by this stuff.” Luckily for us, the knives haven’t come out retrospectively for this band of lunatics just yet – and here comes Matador Records to tempt fate by waggling them in our faces once more, by means of a reissue programme for their 1980s output beginning with these three mid-decade releases: Psychic… Powerless… Another Man’s Sac / Rembrandt Pussyhorse / PCPPEP.

In this Texan band’s drug-crazed heyday, the Surfers weren’t so much a band as a five-headed wrecking ball smashing through towns and cities all over America: the drum kit’s on fire, fists are flying, and dancing naked under grainy footage of eye surgery and snuff movies is their touring dancer known as Ta-Da. And while their peripatetic chaos meant they were in effect a scene of one, they weren’t wholly sui generis: traces of their mutant sound can be heard in The Birthday Party, the loopy elasticity of Primus or the wail and shriek of the Dead Kennedys.

The live show infamy might be both a blessing and a curse for the band, as the albums do lose something isolated from the icky visuals, but they’d tell you that themselves. Regardless, their debut secretion, Psychic… Powerless… Another Man’s Sac, remains an acidic slice of gonzo rock that set a template a few brave souls dared to follow: Lady Sniff for example, preempts the howling and hollering of Bone Machine-era Tom Waits by a good seven years, whilst the Country Teasers took a lot of what they know from songs like Gary Floyd. 

These reissues are sometimes the aural equivalent of applying brasso to the rusted hull of a trawler, but what truly sparkles – and proves to be the ace up the Buttholes’ sleeve – is the guitar of Paul Leary, as inventive as any other guitarist you care to mention. Whether it’s the down-a-canyon-in-a-barrel of Eye Of The Chicken; the thrashed-to-death The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey’s Grave from PCPPEP, or any number of zings and pops across these three strong reissues.

Happily, Matador have announced this is the first set in a series of reissues, with the mighty Dadaist collage rock of 1987’s Locust Abortion Technician next in line. Bring it on!

words ADAM JONES