Flipper
Love (MVD Audio)Flipper
Fight (MVD Audio)“It’s hard to do something that’s real and different and new in this world today,” snarls Flipper mouthpiece Bruce Loose in coiling lament “Learn to Live” from Love, the Bay Area behemoth’s first studio LP in more than 15 years. These old dogs haven’t learned any new tricks, but with Jack Endino in the producer’s chair and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, they manage a raucous, post-punk retread that, after the teenaged delinquency of “Be Good, Child!” goes off like “Sex Bomb” closing 1982’s seminal Album: Generic Flipper. Slow and low remains the m.o., Novoselic’s thick basslines grounding the sloppy, suffocating guitar screech of Tedd Falconi in the proto-Melvins crawl “Old Graves” and “Why Can’t You See” as Loose drivels his characteristic Sex Pistol filth: “I don’t waste time; I’m not a whore.” A handful of the new cuts appear on the 45-minute, confrontational live companion, Fight, recorded over two shows in 2007, a quarter-century after Blow’n Chunks at CBGB. The grating “Night Falls” spills out at twice the length of its studio companion, while classic opener “Way of the World” and leeching “Shine” still hurt like the first time.
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This article appears in June 19 • 2009.