Alexander’s drumming equates its versatility to Claypool’s songwriting, offering ample opportunity for tempo shifts, tone changes and mood dimensionalization.
Primus stuttering song skin#
They’re still abrasive as hell, scratching and tearing the skin alongside Claypool’s loud bass bumps. The nimble solo on “Is it Luck?” sharply contrasts the trailer sirens of “Those Damned Blue-Collared Tweekers.” With Sailing the Seas of Cheese, LaLonde’s dirty solos are perfectly at home. LaLonde stays within the same gritty, grimy thrash off-shooting as he began on Frizzle Fry, but slings even more loose solos around with his performances. Guitarist Larry LaLonde and drummer Tim Alexander don’t drag their heels either, as both musicians are at the top of their games as well. His vocals follow suit, with diverse singing styles like the stuttering mumbles in “Tommy the Cat” and the cleaner grooves in “Jerry Was a Racecar Driver.” Claypool never stays in a single lane on Sailing the Seas of Cheese the entire album is a precise demonstration of everything the musician has in him, and from start to finish, every single track has something to love. They’re much less complex, but Claypool constantly makes his bass playing known, never falling into the background and always introducing something unexpected, but apropos to the songs. Songs like the stomping “Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweakers” lay on the heaviness with steady, low-tuned bass strums. But Claypool’s funk doesn’t command the entire album’s sound. “Is it Luck?” is another standout track, with a consistently funky metal bass rhythm that bounces across the ricocheting guitars and drums. Claypool slaps, strums, and rocks his way through obscenely diverse playing styles, all with a funky groove that never lets up. Single “Tommy the Cat” is superhumanly complex, one of the finest examples of bass playing ever heard. Les Claypool remains the most intricate bass player in his class, ripping apart songs with clanging bass chords and rubbery twangs. Sailing the Seas of Cheese features all of the established markings of Primus. That is why it’s a masterpiece of alternative rock and the finest work Primus ever released. That is Sailing the Seas of Cheese’s biggest strength. The aesthetic of Primus didn’t change one bit with their second LP, but those subtle improvements to their songwriting finally convinced the radio crowd that the band was something special.
It was accepted by the mainstream as a gritty, slamming collection of rock songs, with Les Claypool enthusiastically yodeling and sneering the whole way through. It featured some of the band’s most popular singles like “Jerry Was a Racecar Driver”, all while climbing to platinum status over the course of ten years. But Sailing the Seas of Cheese, Primus’ second LP, is routinely marked as the commercial breakthrough of the California trio. But Primus stood on the catacombs of this growing metropolis, casually grinning as they constructed another warped, proggy hit for their discography, one that was sure to alienate the comfortable mainstream, just like Frizzle Fry did before. Grunge was securing its place in the history books, while ambitious acts like Tool, Rage Against the Machine and Deftones were steadily taking their places in the Pantheon of rock and metal.
But the climax of the night was the first encore, "Southbound Pachyderm," a surreal, 12-minute epic accompanied by visions of an elephant on a trampoline.Review Summary: III: It's not Primus caving to the mainstream it’s the mainstream caving to Primus.īeneath alternative rock’s growing popularity, bands were changing.
The monolithic heavy metal stomp of "Eyes of the Squirrel," the stuttering boogie of "Lee Van Cleef" and the trance-like drone of "Green Ranger" (with Claypool bowing a stand-up bass) were all highlights. After a brief intermission - during which they screened vintage Popeye cartoons onstage - the trio returned to spin through the entire "Green Naugahyde" album in order. Among the musical highlights of the set were the back-to-back pairing of the wobble-funk epic "Golden Boy" and the junkyard clatter of "Over the Falls." Guitarist Larry LaLonde and prodigal drummer Jay Lane locked in synch and spun to the edge of control, but rest assured that virtuoso bassist Claypool was the constant center of attention.īut that was only half of the show. They hit the stage for an hour-long set of catalog fan favorites, as impressionistic videos illuminated the face-visors of two towering inflatable astronaut balloon figures that book-ended a large video screen featuring a hodgepodge mash-up of vintage sci-fi films, old television shows, instructional films, newsreels and home movies.