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 labelled
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 fuck
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, way 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.
Recorded in London in 1985, this is Pierce’s most poppy
and new wavey record. Craig Leon, whose production credits by this point
included such classics as the first albums of both The Ramones and Suicide,
does some pretty slick work. While Pierce handles all of his guitars for the
first time, his studio band includes drummer Andy Anderson who just departed
from The Cure and John MacKinzie who was between Wham! sessions. The highpoint
is the added bonus tracks - the experimental poems and songs from the
seven-inch that accompanied the original LP.
The eerie cover, picturing Pierce in black and white,
staring into the distance with a shotgun slung over his shoulder, gives as much
of an indication of the thematic material inside as much as the session
musicians do the musical material. While the polished music could use a little
grit at times, the lyrics are the opposite. While Pierce continues to sing
about some of his favourite themes - murder, sex, pain, failure, debauchery,
drugs, and prostitution, the murder part of the equation is accentuated.
The first song, “Love and Desperation,” displays Pierce’s
significant progress as a singer, songwriter, and guitarist - containing a few
of his best lines. Starting out almost as if it is might become a no-wavey
Contortions type of song, “Love and Desperation” quickly moves into its pop/ska
foundation. Pierce’s guitar solo, while showcasing his ability, contains no
small amount of cheese. “Sex Killer” is a beat oriented 1980s pop number whose
title gives away the subject matter. “Cleopatra Dreams On” is almost R.E.M.-ish
but contains some of Pierce’s best Television-style guitar lines. With its
walking bass, “Sensitivity” is jazzy and interesting despite the production.
Just in case you were confused about Pierce singing a song about this subject,
the chorus is: “Sensitivity is not in you and not in me.”
Next, the rootsy “Hey Juna” picks up the pace with
another walking bass line and big ghostly production. The lyrics, sung in
English, Japanese, and Spanish, phrased and themed in the style of Willie
Dixon’s “Wang Dang Doodle,” mention Baby Romi (Mori, his girlfriend at the
time), Murray the Man (Mitchell, a friend from the Fur Bible and Siouxsie and
the Banshees), Kid the Squid (Congo Powers, best friend and Gun Club
band-mate), and Nick the Cave (I’ll let you guess this one). Asking, “is it
uptown or down… yellow, black or brown… Chinatown or funkytown?”, the INXS new
wave “Love Circus” declares, “we haven't seen anyone dead like you / since a
war was near.” As Pierce concludes “you got a price that is not so nice / you
got demise written on your mind,” one can’t help but wonder if the singer was
directing these lines at himself. “Wildweed,” the punk number on the record, is
the story of a man who kills his wife and children so he can no longer hurt
them. Not “The Stranger,” the protagonist sets the house on fire and heads to
Mexico. While the song suffers a bit from the sterile production, Pierce’s
spazzy solo deserves special praise. With “The Midnight Promise,” Pierce ends
the album as he began it – with a Jamaican-tinged pop song. The chorus is very
Television, or even, The Las Vegas Story.
In addition to perhaps the best music here, “The Midnight Promise” also
contains some Pierces most interesting and perverse imagery (“your breath on
the window rings the note/ you’re always coughing from the smoke and hatching
children in your throat”). This one is about an East Village junkie prostitute.
The only hitch is that the guitar, played a bit like Tom Verlaine, somehow
comes off like a cross between late-period David Gilmour and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Pierce redeems himself at the ending as the song fades into a solo acoustic
Mississippi John Hurt style instrumental part.
There are a number of good songs and good ideas here. I
think my problem is primarily the production. But for those who like the
eighties pop and new wave sounds, I would recommend this. This of course is
also a must for rabid Gun Club enthusiasts.