Album Reviews

In the nervous, jumpy, wiry world of guitar-driven late ‘70’s-early ‘80’s post-rock intellectual punk, popularized by bands like Gang of Four, Buzzcocks, early XTC and (more broodingly) Wire, Mission of Burma was America’s premier practitioners. They probably accrued more legend than record sales, though.

The unlikely, Boston-based assemblage of four first issued Vs. in 1982 on the tiny Ace of Hearts label, produced by label head Rick Harte, who, as the full sized glossy booklet points out was very much concerned with sound quality, particularly how the cymbals would sound on this debut LP that packs most of its sonic punch in a limited high frequency bandwidth where cymbals and steely-sounding strings reside.

MOB was part of a musical movement that attempted to stuff into a piñata the sludgy folk-rock, confessional singer-songwriter stuff that had suffocated rock’s core exuberance and beat the shit out of it.

And beat the shit out of it is what MOB does on this record of minimalist, adrenaline anthems calculated to wake the rock audience at the time from the suffocating sensitive singer-songwriter stupor that had engulfed it.

It was a short-lived awakening of course, overwhelmed quickly by the synth-driven, hair band revolution that dominated the 1980’s. It’s understandable too. This stuff is way too raw and disturbing for mainstream tastes. No wonder MOB achieved cult status and small sales, while a pop outfit from Boston like The Cars made it so big a few years later. Hey, I love the Cars, but while their debut sounds tame, poppy and almost quaint and charming all these years later, Mission of Burma’s debut still has the power to force the adrenaline to flow. It’s lost none of its original, primitive power. It’s what rock was and is supposed to be about.

The entire MOB catalog has been lavishly and deservingly reissued by Matador sourced from the original analog master tapes and cut all-analog to lacquer by George Marino and Ray Janos at Sterling Sound.

I haven’t heard MOB CDs but where MOB’s music resides is where CDs truly suck. I can imagine all the beauty and majesty of the guitars smothered under the saran-wrappy digital gauze. I can imagine the chunky, powerful snare drum and those ringing, chimey cymbals being reduced to brittle, one dimensionality.

But I don’t have to! And you don’t have to because the sound on this beautiful gatefold LP (plus bonus four song 12” EP plus free MP3 digital download plus March 1983 live performance DVD) is everything a great analog reissue is supposed to be.

The DVD, by the way, is an appropriately primitive-looking (but pretty good sounding) affair that’s as much rockumentary as llve concert—the Beantown club scene in all of its sweet, aggressive glory.

There’s not a great deal of bottom end, though both the kick drum and bass are honestly and cleanly recorded, but all of the real action is on top, where the cymbals spectacularly sizzle brightly and sweetly and where the guitars, though piercing, exude an addictive overdriven tonal complexity that digital bleaches dry and renders useless. The further up you turn this record, the better it sounds!

The high voltage energy is visceral and not to be denied. I’ll put it to you this way: if the closer, “That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate,” doesn’t have you up and dancing, check your VTA and your EKG!