ELECTRICLARRYLAND

Butthole Surfers: Gibby Haynes (vocals); Paul Leary (guitar); King Coffey (drums). Additional personnel: Fooch (pedal steel guitar); John Hagen (cello); Mark Eddinger (keyboards); Andrew Weiss, Bill Carter (bass); Danno Saratak (drum programming). Producers: Paul Leary (tracks 1-2, 5, 8, 11-13); Steve Thompson (tracks 3-4, 6-7, 9-10). Engineers: Stuart Sullivan (tracks 1-2, 4-5, 8, 11-13); Chris Shaw (tracks 3, 6-7, 9-10). The notorious Butthole Surfers continue their onslaught of gloriously twisted guitar rock on ELETRICLARRYLAND. Singer Gibby Haynes is like a skid-row bum in a Kabuki theater, donning the masks of various characters and investing all of them, from the psychedelic shaman of "Pepper" to the apocalyptic ranter of "Birds," with trailer-park trashiness. The other Surfers match Haynes step for step, generating an unrelenting barrage of organized chaos. Over the course of their decade-plus tenure as kings of bizarro avant-punk, these Texans have learned to temper their freneticism with a more reserved, if equally skewed, sensiblility. Toward this end, "Let's Talk About Cars," with its low-key atmospherics, and the almost pastoral "Pepper" provide a welcome contrast to the band's famous sonic assault. On Electriclarryland, their second major-label album, the Butthole Surfers continue the streamlined direction they began with Independent Worm Saloon, which basically means it's a loud guitar rock album. Even though there's potential for the record to become unnecessarily generic, it's to the Buttholes' credit that they still have the desire to throw enough bizarre wrenches into the machinery to keep most of their diehard audience satiated. Certainly, Electriclarryland will sound way too tame for fans of Locust Abortion Technican and Hairway to Steven, and they're right, to a certain extent. For listeners accustomed to their unhinged, perverse '80s recordings, there is nothing on this guitar-heavy record to please them. But Electriclarryland is a logical maturation for the band. It's odd to think of the Buttholes maturing, but that is the case with this album. They have a couple of jangly pop numbers that appear to be played relatively straight and the heavier numbers have a piledriving inevitability that make them memorable. In short, Electriclarryland rocks and it rocks hard, with enough energy for bands half of the Buttholes' age. And underneath the seemingly normal surface, the Buttholes have thrown in enough jokes and have twisted around enough clich?s to prove that the band may mature, but they'll never really grow up. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine