Led by the impossibly tall and invariably naked Gibby Haynes, the Butthole Surfers were a maverick troupe of acid freaks, deadbeats and outcasts whose early work gleefully twisted punk and psychedelia into grotesque, distended shapes. On stage, terrifyingly, they were aided by graphic footage of sex change operations, and worse.
Matador Records’ Buttholes reissue programme kicks off with the band’s debut full-length album Psychic, Powerless, Another Man’s Sac (8/10), whose highlights include Mexican Caravan, an increasingly frazzled space rocker that tells of a search for heroin; the delightfully disgusting, phlegm-powered Lady Sniff; and the hallucinatory Cowboy Bob, an ever-spiralling, post-apocalyptic acid-fantasy in which Haynes jabbers in the manner of a someone who’s undergone a partial lobotomy.
Follow-up Rembrant Pussy Horse (8/10) was more of the same, only more sinister, from the warped and woozy opener Creep In The Cellar, via the punch-drunk drone of Hall Of Whirling Knives, to a cover of The Guess Who’s American Woman so demented it sounds like a fairground being dismantled.
The live mini-album PCPPEP (7/10) captures much of the band’s on-stage intensity and climaxes with a completely unglued version of Something (not the Beatles song) on which guitarist Paul Leary is dominant, somehow hauling maniacal riffs and psychotic solos from the maelstrom as it swirls. Genius.
