BOSTON (Reuters) - "I don't expect you to understand," drawled Butthole Surfers' singer Gibby Haynes from the stage of Boston's Paradise club Wednesday (Oct. 17) evening during the second show of the band's first tour in five years.
"I just want your unconditional love," he deadpanned, manipulating the end of his sentence with the modulation unit he would use relentlessly throughout the Austin band's performance.
It wasn't a love song; this sole spoken address to the audience was Haynes bemoaning the poor sound coming from the onstage monitors. Though on the quiet side, it was fine for the audience, but the quintet - ill-at-ease onstage - would shuffle stiffly through nearly a handful of songs before it looked comfortable enough to open up its bag of tricks and let the psychedelic garage rock flow.
This tour follows a half-decade absence from performing, during which time the band moved from its 1990s home of Capitol Records to Californian indie Surfdog, which is affiliated with Disney's Hollywood Records. The Surfers' Hollywood debut this summer, Weird Revolution, includes more electronic-influenced rock, first glimpsed on the band's Capitol swansong, 1996's Electriclarryland.
In Boston, the CD's first single, "The Shame of Life" (which was co-written by Haynes and Kid Rock), came off harder, with an organic pulse, as did the band's major chart hit from Electriclarryland, the trip-hop-flavored "Pepper."
Hit singles are not the mainstay of the Surfers' fame, though. Riots, naked - at the very least - dancers, and provocative stage antics were the band's early props. This time around, outrageous acts were merely suggested by the occasional daring visuals on a video screen backdrop, but keenly felt when the music surged to a vivid, untamed climax.
If the first part of the set looked like a neutered band was operating limply, then the rest made up for it with soaring, driving - occasionally daring - music that switched emphasis between the juggernaut guitar work of Paul Leary and tour guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, and the thrill-packed percussive maelstrom that is drummer King Coffey. Coffey's work was heightened when Klinghoffer doubled up with him for a few songs, using a second drum kit, the two forming a riveting display.
New songs from Weird Revolution - "Get Down," "Dracula from Houston," a stunning "They Came In" - blended well with the band's older material.
The encore returned to the past as the manic "Who Was in My Room Last Night?" ripped the air, steeping the club in dervish guitar licks and frenzied rhythm. The finale, the expansive, experimental "The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey Oswald's Grave," seemed like it could have - and should have - fallen apart the very next second, but it didn't.
The Butthole Surfers stuck together during their rangy path and outrode the song's excesses - which just about sums up the Butthole Surfers' glorious survival past mere notoriety, to be a great American rock band.
