BUTTHOLE SURFERS - LOCUST ABORTION TECHNICIAN (1987)

As the champions of knowing idiocy, the Butthole Surfers had to have had some idea they knew what they were doing when they created Locust Abortion Technician, a half-hour or so of scummy post-punk riddled with samples, nonsense and drug-fueled lunacy. They manage to hide it pretty well, though: not a shred of those thirty-four minutes makes any sense whatsoever, and try as hard as you want to decipher it, LAT offers no answers. Many times have descriptions such as "the ultimate drug record," and "just listening to it gets you high" been bandied around, but let me assure you: if it's drug music you're looking for, then look no further.

I've often wondered what it must have been like mixing songs like HAY and Kuntz. Did the band actually sit there in their home studio in Austin, pondering over minor creative decisions in a deep and meaningful way? "Yeah, just turn that loop of Gibby saying 'hey!' over and over again up a little for that last part, then we can fade in that reversed/sped-up drum track. This'll really bring the track to its fullest potential and make the album what it's supposed to be." And when they 'wrote' Kuntz, which is essentially a lengthy sample of a Thai pop song with some typically random delay effects thrown in, was there a deep sociological message they were trying to convey, and if so, what was it? Did the Butthole boys believe that through music, they could demonstrate the fallibility of the construct we refer to as 'language' by showing that without context, words are nothing but meaningless symbols? Or did they just get high and trust their luck? Do they even remember making this record?

They certainly pleaded ignorance when an interviewer allegedly asked them about the recording process for a previous EP, Creamed Corn From The Socket Of Davis. Guitarist Paul Leary said he remembered choosing the cover art, but other than that, none of them could recall the release even existed, never mind details of its recording.

But is that all there is to LAT? A bunch of nihilistic Texas punks high on acid spazzing out in a home studio and seeing what comes out of it? Could a group of drug-addled wastoids fronted by a former accountant really write and record a song that so well captures the ominous certainty of aging and loneliness as 22 Going On 23? Could the musings and ideas of a few artsy, scatology-minded perverts really amount to a song like U.S.S.A., delving as deeply as it does into the frantic hypoxia of Cold War anxieties while at the same time turning them on their head? The answer, of course, is "Yes, they could, and yes, they did."

Because the best part of LAT is its irreverence and balls-out lunacy. Sometimes the only way to really express the heights and depths of speculation and realization to which drugs can take you is to make the form of your expression as random and chaotic as the drugs themselves. Musically speaking, LAT may be bookended by arguably superior albums (1986's Rembrandt Pussyhorse and 1988's Hairway To Steven), but neither one of them manages to match the energy, darkness, euphoria and, surprisingly enough, the consistency and coherence of Locoust Abortion Technician. As ambitious as the other two offerings were, their insistence on telling the whole story on every song means that they're not as quick to the punch, and far from being incomplete sketches, LAT's grooves and moods say all that needs to be said; they just do it better, faster and more accessibly.

And it's not like there aren't 'real songs' on Locust Abortion Technician. Human Cannonball is a precursor to the more focused work found on Hairway To Steven and later releases, featuring clearly sung vocals, complete with catchy lyrics and vocal hooks, over a fairly traditional chord progression, and The O-Men, bizarre and terrifying as it is, is actually a neat little barrage of genre-bending noise rock that satisfies well with its simplicity.

The latter song also emphasizes part of what makes LAT rise above the Surfers' guitar-driven post-punk contemporaries: how clear it sounds. It seems that in the midst of their drug bingeing, Leary, Haynes and the other Buttholes actually did some exemplary EQ and level work; every instrument can be heard with crystal clarity, every acid-drenched guitar overdub and battered floor tom is as audible as Gibby Haynes's frantic hollering and pleading, with none of the weird distance and treble-heavy muddiness that plagued the other important records of LAT's time and genre, such as Big Black's Songs About Fucking, Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation and Swans' Children Of God. It's no surprise, really, that Leary went on to record songs for Sublime, U2 and Daniel Johnston and others: the man has a gift for production, and LAT offers the first real glimpses of that gift.

A full fifth of Locust Abortion Technician is the smoked-up Sabbath riffage of Sweat Loaf, which is inconveniently placed at the start of the album, as if the Surfers were trying their damndest to ensure no one would have the patience or interest to listen to the whole thing... or maybe it's a warning? The horrifying scorn and drudgery of what follows is as hypnotic as it is off-putting. Pittsburgh To Lebanon and Weber ask dark and delicious questions of the listener, before providing their own answer, which is, as it always is with Locust Abortion Technician, drugs, drugs and more drugs. Drugs ask the questions and drugs provide the answers. In case I haven't stated it clearly enough, this is an album made by and for people who do drugs, enjoy doing drugs and are on drugs right now.

Aside from the aforementioned Kuntz, there is more cryptic humor scattered throughout, including the famously nonsensical punchline to the record's opening joke, and the fact that there are two separate and subtly different tracks on it called Graveyard, with, once again, no concrete explanation offered. It could be said that the Surfers' ever-superior take on psychedelia owes much to their refusal to take themselves seriously. While other drug bands scuttle about frantically, trying to tell deep truths about their trips and how their doors of perception were like, opened so wide, man, the Buttholes always seemed to secretly know that it was all completely meaningless, and the strength and surprising beauty of that knowledge was never more evident than it was on the blisteringly nonsensical Locust Abortion Technician.