Unpop Culture: Reverb Motherfuckers ‘Route 666’ Review
The vinyl bargain bin is more than a graveyard of kitsch whose fate was sealed the moment it appeared on a yacht rock compilation—it’s also where you’ll find reverb, motherfucker.
Social stratification in the inanimate realm has never been more prevalent. Study your surroundings, crate digger. Notice the concept of power structure isn’t exclusive to us carbon-based life forms?
Observe the face-out display at your local record store, engineered to compulsion, eye-level and entrance adjacent. Prime location. Witness the ornament in the limelight, perhaps it’s a 220-gram pressing of Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago, or some other representation of elitist snobbery. Too expensive for a peasant’s meagre scrapings.
Examine the real estate beneath. The riff-raff rung of the hierarchy. The slum by the airport. What have we here? Leo Sayer, Margaret Roadknight, Demis Roussos. Don’t forget the obligatory copy of Christopher Cross’ Flamingo album. That motherfucker is everywhere.
Keep crating—the dust cloud encroaching the sinus gland suggests the plebs gather nearby, the welfare office of vinyl infrastructure. The moisture attaching to the lung? Oh, that’s just the subterranean, home of the derelict and deranged. By the way, meet the mayor, Reverb Motherfuckers.
From the initial “Welllllll” mincing from the stained lips of an anonymous minty chap, RMF’s murky trap is set. The acid-fried sludge of Highway to Hojo’s has its victim treading quicksand, as the ode to a greasy spoon found between Texas and Hell shrieks its aural web. A word of warning: this album is a low IQ stomper, manufactured for the cretin, by the cretinous.
And then there’s Who Got the Crack?
The significance of this overcooked meth crystal is that it proffers the unconventional without the yearn of pomposity. The song ascertains that a delve into the offbeat need not be a mutual masturbation.
Amid the sordid byplay of Route 666 is an inferred peculiarity akin to a societal rung beneath Lubricated Goat. Where are RMF from? Dunno. When was the album released? Good question. As mayor of the subterranean, the album is not born from time or locale, so deal with it.
The lesson here is this: always judge an album by its cover. Pink flamingo with a dark-green background motif? No, not again. Lysergic perversion under the guise of low socio-economic circumstance? Yes. Any band with Motherfuckers in the name? What do you reckon?
© Chuck Hagen
