Primus Album Reviews - Cilantro Milkshake

“Hello all you boys and girls, I’d like to take you to the inside world. It’s quite an irregular place to be, but never fear, you’re safe with me…

… well maybe.”

Nobody and I mean NOBODY can go a-BOINGY-a-BOINGY-a-BOINGY like Primus and it would be foolish to even attempt it. They also go BLOOPITY-BOP and a-SHAH-buh-DOO-BEE unlike anything you’ve ever heard. This hyper-talented, hyper-creative trio is in a class of their own, in a crooked building miles away from the rest of the school.

Bassist/vocalist Les Claypool plays the bass with as much effort as the rest of us breathe. It’s funk on crack, loud in the mix, often slappy but never sloppy, sometimes more like percussion than strings, full of unusual rhythms, chords, and effects. Vocally, he doesn’t have much range, but he makes up for it with sheer originality. With lyrics that come in the form of “sit down and let me tell you a story” and never “this is how I’m feeling today,” he does as much rapping and spoken word as he does actual singing. With the bass supplying the meat and potatoes, guitarist Larry Lalonde is free to merely add some color, which he usually does by soloing like a madman in a herky-jerk fashion that’s all his own. I don’t know how you can spend 80% of your time playing insanely off-kilter solos and seem “understated” within the context of the band, but such is the case here, you know, because Primus exists in another dimension. Drummer Tim Alexander plays something between funk in fast-forward and the spazziest prog rock ever, with a touch of heavy metal brutality. He was replaced by the much different Brain for a couple albums, but whatever, we’ll get to that later.

With these descriptions, you’d think this is the most pretentious and/or disjointed band ever, but nope. They’re as far from pretentious as it gets. Goofy, silly, zany, cartoonish, and circus-like are more accurate. And they sound like three guys who were meant to play music together, making neat songs that have a lot of personality. (Well, at least when their songs are actual songs. There are also a bunch of jammy tracks that don’t really go anywhere.)

If I ever find myself humming Primus, I’m usually humming a rhythm rather than a tune. There aren’t catchy hooks. If you don’t like Primus, that could be a reason why, but plenty of people do, including me. And they’ve sustained widespread popularity since the early 90s and have a dedicated cult following. Primus most definitely DOES NOT SUCK!

Suck on This

1989
10 bowls of Corn Chex out of 10

This is a live album with songs that were later released in studio-recorded form. So why is it my favorite? Two reasons:

One: I always thought Primus’ studio sound sold the band a bit short, a little too controlled, not capturing the raw power they can pump out. But this? It’s just BLARING with rocking goodness. That snare drum has a helluva “pop” and the bass is echoing off the walls. The big loud parts where everyone’s going for the kill sound delightfully chaotic and heavy.

Two: I don’t think any other Primus album flows just right, whether it’s the song sequence, consistency in the sound quality, or those little ditties and experimental tracks Primus likes to do. But Suck on This starts strong, stays interesting, and ends strong. It’s nine kickass songs in 41 minutes, wall-to-wall Primus action.

“John the Fisherman” is big and bright and bumpy and intricate. “Groundhog’s Day” has a slow, groovy verse that’s just delicious. “Tommy the Cat” shows off that fancy string work in glorious fashion. “Pudding Time” has unbelievable momentum with these sharp stops that might shake your stereo off the table. “Harold of the Rocks” is both dark and fun, and “Frizzle Fry” somehow pulls a pseudo-Eastern vibe into the Primus world and makes for a great closer.

Frizzle Fry

1990
9 balls off a rhinoceros out of 10

The first studio album takes a step toward the totally weird. We get five great songs from Suck on This, four perfectly good new songs, and three really off-putting tracks, including a metal jammy thing “Spagetti Western” and a pointless little ditty “Sathington Willoughby.”

The new proper songs are all good and stretch the Primus formula to its seams. “Mr. Knowitall” features a sinister 80s-sounding guitar lead. “The Toys Go Winding Down” is sort of haunting and creepy. “To Defy the Laws of Tradition” fits in better but drags a bit at 6:40. “Too Many Puppies,” well, that song just STOMPS.

It’s damn good Primus music: nine wonderful songs, each with a beginning, middle, and end, which is more than we get on the subsequent albums. But listening front to back seems intentionally challenging, with those experimental tracks cluttering up its second half. Take the parts of this one; they’re better than the whole.

Sailing the Seas of Cheese

1991
8 awesome prowling machines out of 10

Remember when I said the studio stuff sells the band a bit short? That’s the case here, with a slight but noticeable leaning toward dryer, less juicy production. It sure highlights all the impressive rhythms, whether they’re Tim’s flashy rolls or Les’ thumping bass, but it also takes something away from the Primus sound I love.

“Is it Luck?” goes 106 miles per hour, while “Sgt. Baker” pounds away at a steady mid-tempo. “Jerry Was a Racecar Driver” is bright, tight, and catchy, whereas “Fish On” rides a relaxed groove for most of its almost eight minutes. The quintessential “Tommy the Cat” is here too, with those wailing solos in pristine form.

All in all, it’s another batch of good songs, only a couple I’m not crazy about, and not too much of the wacky in-between nonsense.

Pork Soda

1993
7 Bills or Jacks or Petes or Dennises out of 10

This album has some precious moments. “My Name Is Mud” is a lovable song, basically the Primus formula distilled into pure down-tempo, off-kilter goodness. “Bob” is creepy and slow, with guitar licks that perfectly accent the groove, and lyrics that are uncharacteristically dark. And “Mr. Krinkle” sounds creepy with Les using a bow on his bass like it’s a cello, but it turns into a wacky swinging circus by the end. Good song!

The rest? A bit of a letdown. “DMV” bounces like some other Primus songs but never was my favorite. “The Pressman” was probably the weakest one from Suck on This. “Nature Boy,” yeah, it’s a song too. Other than that, there’s some ditties and jams and experimental noisy tracks, including the tortuous “Hamburger Train,” eight minutes of go-nowhere noise over a beat. Man, that sounds harsh for a band I truly love, but hey, I try to tell it like it is.

Tales From the Punchbowl

1995
7 Texans out of New Orleans out of 10

Holy hell, the production on this bad boy is PERFECT. The band sounds loud and juicy and alive. It makes me wish all the albums sounded this good.

The bummer is that the batch of songs we do get is quite uneven. The stuff I like, I friggin’ love. But a good chunk of it is made up of impressive but undeveloped jams.

We’ve got “Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver,” the most radio-friendly song in the whole library, just leaping with joyful energy and featuring the catchiest guitar lead ever. There’s “Southbound Pachyderm” on the other end of the spectrum, building slowly over a somber (by Primus standards) bassline. And there’s “Over the Electric Grapevine” with out-of-this-world drumming chugging along like a freight train as the strings take a double dose of acid.

Besides those three awesome songs, I’m not particularly fond of anything else, and it makes me miss the more fully developed songs of earlier Primus.

Brown Album

1997
6 bachelor’s degrees out of 10

Perhaps the winning Primus formula had been exhausted, and so we got something quite different this time around. The band got a new drummer, Brain, who plays a straightforward downbeat style through most of this album. He shows flashes of flair here and there, but that hill-and-valley bounce from the earlier Primus stuff is gone.

Not only that, but the sound quality is extremely dry and echoey, like we’re hearing the band from the far side of a shipping container. Think Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti, but without, you know, a bunch of classic songs.

There’s still Primus’ circusy vibe, though, and of course Les and Ler continue to impress with all their little tricks. There’s heavy funk stuff (“Shake Hands With Beef,” “Golden Boy”), there’s super-odd almost-jazz stuff (“Hats Off,” “Duchess and the Proverbial Mind Spread”), there’s Primus at their punkiest (“Coddington”), and there’s one very catchy, cute, one-of-a-kind song “Over the Falls.”

I like it, and it’s nice to have something totally different that still feels true to Primus, but I can’t say it’s in any way better than the older stuff.

Antipop

1999
5 fingers in my pie out of 10

At different points in this album, Les tells us, “I am your Uncle Sam,” “I am the Antipop,” “I’m a drowning man.” Which one is it, Les? Who are you? It sounds like he doesn’t know, and it’s fitting that we witness this identity crisis on an album that attempts to rob Primus of their authenticity.

The story is that the record company wanted Primus to suddenly fit into the trendy nu-metal landscape, a la Korn and Limp Bizkit. It seemed stupid then, and it seems stupider now, since nu-metal’s prominence lasted only a few years.

This album simultaneously proves that (a) studio production can drastically change how a band sounds, and (b) you can’t make Primus sound like anything other than Primus.

Oddly enough, some of the songs are more Primusy than what we got on the last one. Brain seems more confident as he finds awesome grooves on “Great the Sacred Cow” and “Electric Uncle Sam.” Sure, the sonic quality is less of the old juicy “Boingy-Boingy” and more like nu-metal’s ugly “cinder blocks dropped into a truck” sound, but the songs themselves are groovy. There’s more of that heavy funk feel here too.

There are moments, though, that REEK of the nu-metal vibe, and “Mama Didn’t Raise No Fool” in particular is super off-putting. I get the record company being like “Can we make this band sound nastier?” but did they also write actual fucking riffs?

Animals Should Not Try to Act Like People

2003
5 purty little ice cubes out of 10

The band released a DVD with all their music videos, and this 5-song, 28-minute thing was the bonus disc. Tim Alexander is back on drums, but his big blasting power is still missing. The songs are certainly very stylish and weird AS HELL, but none of them really get going in any hard rockin’ direction. It’s pretty experimental and atmospheric.

I wouldn’t strongly vouch for any one song or for the front-to-back listening experience, but at least it all sounds genuine and well-recorded. Let’s put it this way, if you put the band’s entire catalog on shuffle, and one of these songs came on, you’d be fine with it.

Green Naugahyde

2011
6 tinges of poison out of 10

I guess I’m going to have to accept that the hard-hitting, loud-rocking, jittery-jumping Primus days were over by this point. Along with yet another drummer, Jay Lane, who was in the band in the 80s before Tim ever was, the guys offer a juicy fresh and funky 50 minutes of music here, but none of it slams with the violence and gusto of the old stuff.

Is it good for what it is? Yeah! Great, full sound quality, weird-as-ever bass sounds, wild-as-ever guitar, tight rhythms, spacey vocals. The songs are distinct, and the album stays interesting, but it just doesn’t pay off the tension with the hard rocking I yearn for. It’s somehow relaxed and uncomfortable at the same time.

And by the way, when did Les become a straightforward social commentator? You’ve got “Moron TV” with lines like, “She feeds her face with cheddar balls and crams more nonsense in her brain.” And you’ve got “Eternal Consumption Engine” lamenting “Everything’s made in China!”

Anyway, I do appreciate that we get 11 honest-to-goodness songs here, rather than jams and ditties. Those earlier albums could have used a few of these songs to flesh them out.

The Desaturating Seven

2017
??? out of 10

Well, I originally wrote a fairly negative review of this one, but I’m deciding to give it some more time.

This is a concept album if there ever was one, apparently based on a children’s book. It’s obviously Primus yet sounds nothing like them, full of spooky-vibed but goofy-constructed little songs, plus a few long dreary, non-musical sections. It’s pretty brainy, and I don’t mean the drummer. (Tim Alexander is back again.) Stay tuned!

Published October 2021