Mule: If I Don’t Six

Listening to this album out loud is a harrowing experience. For more reasons than the fact the thing starts with the breathless expressions of a woman in the throws of coitus maximus. An honestly incongruous artifact on an album that sounds as if a bunch of drunken hillbillies discovered punk music. Indecipherable, but incredibly energetic, it is an album that fascinated me from the moment I brought it home from whatever record store I happened to be frequenting in 1994. So, probably Moby Disc. And, funny enough, I thought for all these years that If I Don’t Six was produced by one Steve Albini. Turns out, not so much. He did produce Mule’s debut album in 1993, but this sophomore effort wasn’t his work. Despite sounding an awful lot like something he might make.

Haunted honky-tonk. That’s what I want to call this genre of music. Serial killer country punk. Even the album’s cover with the pickup facing away from us alludes to something nefarious going on. Some greasy Brad Pitt in Kalifornia looking dude strangling a young coed on the bench seat of his ’67 Ford pickup while loud rock music blares out of the speakers, drowning our her screams while the camera pulls away from the tailgate… Wow, that’s some dark shit I just conjured! But, honestly, you listen to the blues-y cacophony of track three, “The Beauteous,” and you tell me where your cinematic head goes. If this is what Michigan sounded like in 1994, I’m scared for our nation. Though, based on the nonsense that’s gone down in that state with the guns and the kidnapping plots and militias and whatnot, I suppose this is the real hillbilly elegy. Or whatever that garbage human claimed happened to him in Appalachian Ohio.

Truth be told, I have very little idea what’s going on in this album. I understand about seven of the sung words in its nine tracks. The lead singer, P.W. Long, is either drunk or intentionally slurry or just affected in some sort of old school blues man way. Which turns into a growl when the blues swirls its way up into the punk energy of the songs’ choruses. Eschewing the punk ethos of short burst-like songs, though, Mule takes their time with some plodding stanzas, only to work themselves up into a frenzy. And then back down again. And up again. It’s definitely an aftereffect of the Nirvana-by-way-of-Pixies loud-quiet-loud aesthetic. Like if you could just excise the more rural, working-class underpinnings and affect of Cobain’s cover version of the Meat Puppets’ “Lake of Fire” and mash it up with “Milk It” from In Utero you’d have a good approximation of If I Don’t Six. Easy, right?

Yes, this is an album that probably only the drummer’s mom and I own. Because the drummer’s mom is always super-supportive of the band. Lead singers’ moms are usually assholes. And bassists’ moms don’t even know their sons are in a band. But I weirdly find myself going back to this record on occasion. Certainly more than some more popular ones that from that age. Like all of the records from that age. I find the energy pretty cool. And dare I say, the groove. And I really like the production; the album sounds cool. And I don’t know if it was the band and whomever they got to mix the thing, but it almost does Albini better than Albini does Albini. I listened to their first record that Steve actually produced, and, frankly, this one sounds way cooler. Rednecks, man, they can rock too.