When Lydia Lunch and her band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks clawed their way onto NYC’s No Wave scene, plenty of listeners lowered the grates on their ears and shut up shop for good. 8 Eyed Spy weren’t a room clearer—they were a state clearer; a friend of mine visited Utah at the time and the entire state was deserted. Evidently someone had put the album on their turntable and the population had fled en masse to the Onaqui Mountains, leaving warm dinners still sitting on their tables and parakeets in mid-squawk. Needless to say, I loved them.
But Lunch’s subsequent band, 8 Eyed Spy, was, relatively speaking, a tamer proposition. The caterwaul factor had dropped from ten to four, and 1997’s Luncheone—which compiles 8 Eyed Spy’s entire recorded output—is the proof. Gone, for the most part, is the deliberate grating, replaced by recognizable melodies and a sound prominently featuring Pat Irwin’s saxophone, which brings to mind James Chance and the Contortions. Which isn’t to say 8 Eyed Spy share Chance’s love for free jazz and funk. But they do like his predilection for carefully reined in chaos.
Luncheone includes three covers, which in an of itself demonstrates that Lunch was no longer rejecting the rock tradition No Wave had set out to do away with. On their cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Run Through the Jungle”—which is preceded by the borderline jazzy “Swamp”—Lunch reins in the guitar slash, and while she’ll never be Debbie Gibson, like Patti Smith (you gotta hear Smith’s cover of “You Light Up My Life”) she doesn’t set out to deconstruct the song either.
8 Eyed Spy also take on Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy,” fracturing its Burundi beat while Lunch makes no attempt at sounding like she wants candy or anything else while George Scott III’s bass thumps, Irwin blurts away on sax, and Michael Paumgardhen goes reverb on the guitar. It’s the album highlight. Finally, they go heavy on the harmonica on Bo Diddley’s “Diddy Wah Diddy.” Irwin’s saxophone is downright conventional, Lunch sounds like she’s singing in an echo chamber, and Paumgardhen plays one mean guitar. There’s some discordant piano in there gratis Irwin as well.
Take Lunch’s declamatory delivery out of “Lazy in Love” and it could be a big hit single; saxophonist Pat Irwin dominates “Love Spits,” and on the in-no-hurry live “Dead Me You B Side” Lunch invites the audience to slow dance! She barks out the lyrics while the audience tosses in helpful comment, and I wish I’d been there. The wonderfully named “Motor Oil Shanty” is slip-on-an-oil-slick quick, and as ramshackle (in a good way) as that garage those doomed college kids are always stopping at before they get murdered one by one by some chainsaw-wielding cannibal in the woods.
“You Twist I Shout” could be a Fall song, which sets me to wondering whether Lydia was spending time in her bedroom listening to Welcome to the Witch Trials. Ditto.“Run Away Dark.” Irwin’s sax blurt dominates the mid-tempo “Looking for Someone,” the electrical storm that is “Lightning’s Girl” is old school rock with some marching, charging feet tossed in. Then there’s an interlude of pure noise, and the moral of the story seems to be if you see Lightning’s Girl coming, you’d better run. “Boy Meets Girl” features some spastic guitar and lots of Lunch’s off-key brilliance—when the tempo increases what you have is a great rock song. “2 Square” isn’t as good, but it has guitar appeal, while the live “Run Away Dark” features lots of tambourine and sax, but it’s over too soon.
The aim of No Wave, Lunch told writer Don Watson, “was to destroy rock.” But she knew as well as anyone that was impossible—that rock and roll was here to stay and would outlive us all—that it would still be out there, in the aether, long after some post-apocalyptic species of T-Rex crushed the last of us into foot powder. She also understood that musical evolution was inevitable and acted accordingly—8 Eyed Spy was a turning back, because there simply was no way forward. Although I’m sure some of your free jazz guys—Peter Brötzmann, for instance, would disagree.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
