Tomorrow Hit Today

So what does a grunge band sound like in 1998? It still sounds dirty, but the dirt is arrived at by better technology and a bigger budget. Recorded with legendary Memphis producer Jim Dickinson (who has recorded Big Star and the Replacements but is best known for playing piano with the Rolling Stones), Tomorrow Hit Today has an astonishing variety of guitar sounds and moods. The old Mudhoney were once content to kick you in the gut, but now the grunge lads are discovering the complexities of their grimy sound, adding whinnying slide guitars, swampy bass lines, and emphatic vocals that steer the humor of one song into the pathos of the next. Overlooked in the rush to hype Nirvana, Sub Pop, and coffee, Seattle's Mudhoney now deserve to be listened to with a postgrunge ear. –Lois Maffeo