In July 1996, Tom Engelshoven of Dutch music magazine Oor described Jeffrey
Lee Pierce as the missing link between the Eagles and Kurt Cobain. Four
months after the Gun Club frontman had passed away, the article labeled
him as the true victim of what Engelshoven interpreted as "the American
disease." Among the symptoms were a strong identification with violence
and death and a clear notion of American society being imbued with it.
Pierce's lyrics testified of his awareness of America's earliest history,
a nation established at the barrel of a gun. Obsessed with an inevitable
apocalyptic destiny, he took his lowlife background as an explanation
for a feverish longing for decay. Sex, booze, and drugs all claimed their
share in a self-destructive lifestyle, culminating in an early death at
the age of 37. Wildweed was the first of two solo albums Pierce made in
between his Gun Club albums. Following in the footsteps of remarkable
statements like Miami and The Las Vegas Story, the material presented
here isn't all that different. The violence theme practically drips from
the album cover, depicting Pierce with a dreamy look and a shotgun slung
over his shoulder. Standing amidst what could be the last true vestige
of an unspoiled, rural America, it's a fair bet that he's ready to shoot
anything even slightly disturbing -- upon which he probably will utter
one final howl before putting himself "to rest" as well. Plenty
of those howls are scattered through Wildweed, which opens with a strong
threesome of "Love and Desperation," "Sex Killer,"
and "Cleopatra Dreams On." In more than one way, "Love
and Desperation" is the twin to The Fire of Love's "Sex Beat."
Apart from the infectious driving beat, one only has to compare the lyrics
of the latter ("I, I know your reasons/And I, I know your goals/We
can f*ck forever/But you will never get my soul") to the former ("Somebody
hurts you, so you hurt me/So I hurt somebody else, who I have never seen/Who
hurts somebody else, why on down the road/Who hurts somebody else who
goes on home/With you") to conclude that Pierce's world is one in
which love takes a wrong turn most of the time. Halfway through the album
things get a little awkward when, during the nursery rhyme of "Hey
Juana," Pierce starts name-checking a colleague ("Now Nick the
Cave/He spent all his pay/On a bottle of gin/And a shark without a fin").
Luckily, "The Midnight Promise" makes a beautiful closing piece.
Alas, the CD release of Wildweed adds some extra tracks that appeared
on the Love and Desperation 12" instead of the more intriguing experiments
with spoken word from the 7" bonus that came with the album or the
free jazz of the title track of the Flamingo EP.
(by Quint Kik, All
Music Guide)
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