As the album title intimated, the Geraldine Fibbers’ 1995 major-label debut Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home staked out uncharted musical territory. It was a mesh of art-rock sonics, street-tough stances and an underlying shade of rustic country, and it left many a critic and listener tongue-tied in attempts to pigeonhole. Too alt-y for alt-country, too yokel-y for alt-rock, some folks just didn’t get it. Others though, saw Lost… as a stunning coming-out performance.
For the alt-country bent who were lost by Lost… , you might consider delving into What Part of Get Thee Gone Don’t You Understand? Reissued by the indie label Sympathy for the Record Industry, it combines the band’s initial cassette-only self-release with more recent radio sessions, live encores and other odds and ends. It’s a rickety affair, with upright bass, violin and art-school guitar providing edgy support for the husky vocals of Carla Bozulich. The Fibbers tackle country classics such as Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and George Jones’ “The Grand Tour” and “If Drinking Don’t Kill Me” with both reverence and punk rock deconstruction. Bozulich might make a few ears wince by challenging the tones of two of America’s finest singers with her own cigarette-parched flatness, but there is no denying the pathos that fuels her performance.
Elsewhere, the band shows its own frisky, twangified creativity on originals such as “They Suck” and “Mary”, as well as its knack for understatement on “Marmalade” and the seething “Get Thee Gone”, songs that eventually mutated into epic ear-bleeding jaunts on their major-label debut. What Part of Get Thee Gone Don’t You Understand? exposes the Fibbers in their original conceptualization: a country exploration for a bunch of East Hollywood bohemians.
But then the equation was turned upside-down, and the Fibbers hit their musical stride with Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home. Not surprisingly, Butch picks up where Lost… left off, as the band veers onto more slanted, enchanted roads while delivering overtly rootsy tones on only two tracks, both of which are buried deep within the 14-song collection. Where Lost… sizzled with sprawling, drug-infused beauty, much of Butch goes for the fist-in-the-face approach, with frantic punk and pop riffs pushing Bozulich’s vocals and gender-bent thematics into cat-in-heat-like howls. Tracks like the punk-funk scrawl of “I Killed The Cuckoo” might clear the room, but others, such as the raunchy cover of Can’s “You Doo Right” and the 12-string beauty “California Tuffy” just might be subversive enough to find a spot on modern-rock radio, albeit in the wee wee hours.
A bit too scatterbrained overall, Butch still yields “Trashman in Furs”, possibly the Fibbers’ finest moment yet. The tender, mid-tempo rocker features some of Bozulich’s most comprehensible and, therefore, most harrowing poetics. In other words, less heroin-fantasy imagery, more down-to-earth concerns. A friend is dying, and Bozulich sings “So much to tell you, I raced through the sky, to whisper a message, into your morphine drip.” Then, the response: “I’m ridin’ to a place with no pain, no tears, no art, no ears, no cars, no reason for you to cry for me.” From there, a lead guitar takes over that struggles to find melody, as if plucked from the tainted haze of a gravely ill patient, before submitting to atonal strangulation. Simply devastating.
“Trashman in Furs” makes you realize how unimportant the definition of the Fibbers’ work really is. ND or not? Who gives a shit. This is powerful stuff.
