The 6ths
Wasps' Nests (London)
Mike Watt
Ball-Hog or Tugboat? (Columbia)
by Marc Hirsh
The 6ths
Wasps' Nests (London)
Mike Watt
Ball-Hog or Tugboat? (Columbia)
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in the Rice Thresher, April 21, 1995
Superstar jam sessions are usually a frightening proposition. People are just thrown together in a room with instruments and expected to come up with genius, ignoring the fact that good bands work well because members know what to expect from each other and can play off of that.
Ball-Hog or Tugboat? by Mike Watt and Wasps' Nests by the 6ths both work their way around this by sticking to the vision of a single person. Good thing, too, because God knows what would happen if all the people on these discs had to come up with something as a collective.
Admittedly, Wasps' Nests doesn't exactly qualify as a bona fide jam session. The group is the brainchild of songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Stephen Merrit, and his guests don't contribute more than vocals, with the exception of Mitch Easter, who adds a guitar solo to his track.
The result is a weird collection of straightforward pop tunes sung by members of Superchunk, Tall Dwarfs, Helium, Yo La Tengo, Velvet Crush and other bands while Merrit adds on layers of distorted but quiet instrumentation. The vocals get odd, especially since every singer sounds alike, all singing almost under their breath, adding atmosphere more than melody.
Merrit seems to be aiming for some sort of low-budget shoegazer feel, but the songs would be simple and catchy enough to crack the Billboard charts if they were treated to better and more lively arrangements. Perhaps it's best this way, though. The album's best song, "Here In My Heart," sounds too much like "Take A Chance On Me" as it is.
Ball-Hog is another story altogether. fIREHOSE bassist Mike Watt's involvement on his own album is minimal compared to Merrit. Watt plays bass on all the songs, wrote most of them and only sings on three. He lets his friends do most of the legwork.
And what friends he has. A partial list: Frank Black, Evan Dando, J Mascis, Eddie Vedder, Henry Rollins, Dave Pirner, Flea, Bernie Worrell, half of the Screaming Trees, 2/3 of the Beastie Boys, 2/3 of Nirvana (3/4 if you include tour guitarist Pat Smear, and I'm sure he would've gotten the entire group if he could've), 2/3 of the Meat Puppets and 3/4 of Sonic Youth. Not a bad crop.
Best of all, Watt knows how to put them to good use. Dando's paean to peein' ("Piss Bottle Man") is a nice change of pace for the otherwise squeaky-clean Lemonhead, while on "Against The 70's" Vedder wails with more humor than he's mustered in a while. And you'll never listen to Dinosaur Jr. the same way again after hearing Mascis completely dominate the Funkadelic classic "Maggot Brain."
The real treat is the more obscure personnel. Carla Bozulich walks away with her three songs, and guitarist Nels Cline really shows remarkable taste and innovation.
At the center of it all, though, is Watt, who manages to unify the mess even though he's the only constant on the album. Despite the shifts from the bluesy grind of "Big Train" to the lounge-jazzy "Sidemouse Advice" to the Spanish folk-flavored "Drove Up From Pedro" to the funk of "E-Ticket Ride" to the free-form God-knows-what of "Intense Song For Madonna To Sing," Watt proves himself to be the master of his instrument, playing whatever is called for with ease and style.
It's the relaxed vibe of the album that makes Ball-Hog such a joy. Nowhere is there evidence that anybody involved is trying to make a Big Statement. Watt presents us with a group of people all having fun, resulting in that rarest of albums: an experiment that works.