September 13, 1989 by A.S. Van Dorston

After missing Walt Mink’s first couple performances this year, I asked people what they were like. “Aw dude they ROCK!” I was told.

But so does Motley Crue on a good night. The question is, what differentiates them from, say, hair metal. The first answer is, like alumni Bob Mould’s band, Husker Du, it’s the beauty in the noise. And in addition to the melodies and hooks, Walt Mink puts the funk back into the punk. I’m not talking about awful cliche’d frat-boy party-funk-metal like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Snaking through each song was a relentless groove that does not let up until the music stops, similar perhaps to the legendary early shows of Funkadelic or ZZ Top. But no one could accuse Walt Mink of being retro. They toe a perfect line between classic rock and adventurous new territories.

Bands had already begun tap-dancing on and taunting on that line about five years ago when a flourishing underground of groups began working at the interface between punk and acid rock and got it right. Bands like Scratch Acid, Butthole Surfers, Big Black, Sonic Youth, Husker Du, Squirrel Bait, The Jesus & Mary Chain and Dinosaur Jr. became lost beneath a glorious swell of noise ranging from beautiful to butt-ugly.

Unlike their 70s metal predecessors, they no longer used the guitar as an instrument of self-projection, as a weapon, nor a phallus (well, sometimes). The guitar riffs drowned in its textures, the players disappeared as individuals. They became radically self-effacing, literally getting wiped out by their own noise. In interview they tended to be either mute, or eject analysis, ascribing what they do to instinct. Like many of their peers, Dinosaur Jr. buries the vocals under their uplifting noise, nearly losing J. Mascis’s small fallible voice. They combine lyrical dejection with a transcendent harmonic feedback. It’s a musical violence free of machismo, a smart mix of humor, wounded fragility and love driven mad.

Now several bands from the Pacific Northwest are starting a new “old” direction in sound. They are no longer desecrating the shrine of the guitar hero. Instead, they are worshiping it once more. These bands decided all they wanted to do was be Led Zeppelin (but sounded more like Blue Cheer).

Most of them can be found on Seattle, Washington’s Sub-Pop label. Among them are Green River, Soundgarden, Swallow, Blood Circus, Tad, Nirvana, and best of all, Mudhoney. The phallic guitar is again being used for masturbatory solos, bombastic chords and shouted choruses. Á

While these second generation cock-rockers manage to make the seventies sound more fun than first time around, Walt Mink leaves them in the dust. John Kimbrough is primed to become one of the best guitarists of the 90s. Bassist Candice Belanoff and drummer Joey Waronker are rhythmic juggernauts, rivaling the much-worshipped beat0mongers of Minutemen/Firehose, Chili Peppers, Fishbone and Primus. Not yet even graduating from basement gigs to bars, Walt Mink have transcended their influences. The only clear nod to the past was a purely Minkefied treatment of Big Star’s “Back Of A Car.” They spewed forth songs with a spastic fury comparable to Bad Brains. In fact, John Kimbrough’s vocal intonations reminded me somewhat of H.R.’s high-pitched vocal gymnastics on songs like Bad Brain’s “I Against I.”

Walt Mink brewed up a delicious post-metal, post-hardcore, even post-grunge stew that nearly rendered genres insignificant for that hour and a half in the hot, steamy beer-soaked Kirk basement.

Time will tell how their groove will translate onto recordings. My guess is that if Kimbrough can make his squeaky voice blend in better with the low, low-end music, and churn out some super-tight, concise songs, they’ll be too hot to handle for even Sub Pop. If the music world was just (it’s not), Walt Mink would not only join the exclusive club of Twin Cities legends The Replacements, Husker Du and Soul Asylum, in a couple years they would dominate the world beyond the level of Jane’s Addiction. They deserve, along with Nirvana, Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., The Pixies, Yo La Tengo, Bad Brains, NoMeansNo, Buffalo Tom and Fugazi, the success that is normally only awarded bands like Guns N’ Roses. With talent like this, I still believe these bands to be the roots of the revolution that will truly rock mainstream culture.

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