Gibby Haynes and His Problem — Gibby Haynes and His Problem
And so it begins, the legendary Gibby Haynes starts the album with the oh so catchy Kaiser and the momentum carries thruout. The Butthole Surfers went on "quietus" after the backlash from the more pop oriented Weird Revolution and many proclaimed the end. I proclaim this a new beginning for one of punks oddest ducks Gibby Haynes leader and co-founder of the one of rocks greatest road shows ever.
Since that dark time I had assumed the worst and had written the band and the sum of its parts off, but to my surprise the punk rock icon that is Gibby Haynes has re-invented himself with a new band of not so outrageous, yet highly competent musicians to cut a record and start a touring band that will most certainly shake things up in your local town.
Gibby has had one of the most distinct voices in the experimental punk rock scene since the early 80's fronting one of the most sadly underrated bands AND live acts on the planet the Butthole Surfers. But make no mistake this is not a Surfers record. This record is much different, this is clearly a pop rock record and lyrically Haynes writings are a tad more coherent and introspective, spinning yarns about relationships and love letters, but also more typical stuff like going to Supermans's house and the joys of Redneck Sex, but on overall I found these songs much more compelling and dark. On past recordings humor had always been a huge part of the appeal, but here the band paints a much darker hue.
Sadly these songs are just oddball enough to get exactly zero airplay and little of the acclaim that is due a band of this underground magnitude. From the information provided by the jumbled mess of distorted pictures and hand written liner notes, its hard to tell who does what here, but I suspect Paul Leary's (I stepped on the neighbors cat) guitar squalls surface their beautiful head in a few parts on this disk along with some incredibly spaced out re verb drenched, heavily distorted guitar work which could remind many of Monster Magnet in their earlier days on the standout song I Need Some Help.
A little birdie told me this album was going to happen and while looking for help working with the music software Sonar 3, I discovered the fact that this album was recorded using the software exclusively and overall I was highly impressed with the production. All instruments are clearly defined and very crisp sounding, which says alot for the software the numerous producers chose to use....hopefully I can create something that is 0.0000019% as good. All in all this is much more predictable than anything the Surfers ever did, but I think that is exactly the point, this is Haynes and crew writing quirky pop songs and it succeeds 100% in my book and should not be missed by any fan of the Surfers or Gibby Haynes!