This is possibly my personal favorite of their records. This is a weird anomaly for the band. They were already really fucking weird, playing their own classic brand of fucked-up psych-punk on ‘Psychic… Powerless… Another Man’s Sac’ but this just ups the ante to their sound.
I always loved the fact they started using non-punk rock instruments on here, further developing their brilliant psychedelic sound with some of these REALLY creepy tracks here. They use organs, pianos, violin, in addition to some experimental guitar and/or studio effects. The instrumentals are actually my favorites; “Strangers Die Everyday” is one of the creepiest, darkest songs I’ve personally ever heard, “Perry” (using the Perry Mason theme as a foundation) is hilarious, catchy and just plain awesome. I am very curious about what the hell kind of inside joke they’re riffing on with this track the most out of all of them. “Waiting For Jimmy To Kick” and “In The Cellar” (a demented remix of “Creep In The Cellar”) are also both very, very interesting, creepy tracks.
Then you got “Creep In The Cellar”, one of their best ever songs with that brilliantly accidental violin part (which was originally from another band who used the same 16 track tape before them, but they decided to leave it in); “Sea Ferring” which shows Gibby to be one of the finest screamers ever in rock, “Whirling Hall Of Knives” has one of the coolest sounding guitar parts EVER recorded, and the cut-up, defecated, demented beyond belief version of “American Woman”, which is better than the original. I thought that when I first heard it years ago and still think so.
This album is just extremely creative, original, weird, unpredictable.. any adjective you can think of to describe something totally baffling, unique and any other synonym you can think of. That is this album. I used to think that it was very flawed; upon first listens, it sounds a bit empty in the middle, but coming back to it after several years, you just don’t hear some songs like this being done anywhere else. You can tell that they had freedom to experiment all they wanted here and they took advantage of that.
Locust Abortion Technician was always the “classic” album for most people in the past, but I think people are starting to realize just how much better their previous stuff was. I really don’t think there’s any filler on it either. A minimalist repetitive instrumental does NOT automatically mean “filler” and that’s what I’ve realized over the years. Even “Mark Says Alright” which doesn’t have much to it… is still creepy as hell. Amazing record.
Reprinted from rate your music
Everything seems to start almost normally on Pussyhorse with “Creep in the Cellar,” even with the rather gone violin line — Haynes is intelligible, the piano part is quiet serene. Then again, Haynes is talking about the creep in question doing things like taking off his skin, so clearly all is still at least somewhat tweaked in Surferland. The rest of the album makes that pretty clear; if not quite as strong as Psychic…Powerless, Pussyhorse is still a strong slice of homegrown art/psychedelia gone to a murky hell. Gentler songs like “Sea Ferring” still have a distinct queasiness to them, its sea chanty feeling undercut by the nagging bassline and Haynes’ yelps. When the group goes totally nuts, as on a drum-blasting, squiggly voiced cover of the Guess Who’s “American Woman” that makes the later Lenny Kravitz version seem like the redundant slice of nostalgia it is, no prisoners are taken. “Perry” is another definite nutter, with Haynes or somebody talking about this and that to his “baby” over a slow, organ-heavy groove. This said, the trick about Pussyhorse, and arguably why it’s slightly lesser than Psychic…Powerless, is its overall subtlety in comparison. Things are more dark and gloomy throughout, downright gothic, even, with the organ start and whispery lyrics of “Strangers Die Everyday” being a good example. Leary keeps his playing low and strange throughout, fitting in with new bassist Pinkus rather well as a result. Get past the slight surprise of not always hearing the Surfers going near-all out most of the time, though, and Pussyhorse is still mighty fine, whether talking about the drony guitar weirdness opening “Whirling Hall of Knives” or the echo-treated reprise of “In the Cellar.” CD versions of Pussyhorse conveniently include the Cream Corn From the Socket of Davis EP.
Track Listing
1 Creep in the Cellar 2:05
2 Sea Ferring 3:59
3 American Woman 5:32
4 Waiting for Jimmy to Kick 2:20
5 Strangers Die Everyday 3:09
6 Perry 3:31
7 Whirling Hall of Knives 4:44
8 Mark Say Alright 4:07
9 In the Cellar 3:18
10 Moving to Florida 4:32
11 Comb 4:57
12 TP Parter 4:20
13 Tornadoes 2:36