Psychic Powerless Another Ma

It takes only seconds to realize that Psychic… Powerless took everything one step further in 1985. Hardcore wasn’t a genuinely relevant context for the Butthole Surfers’ first full-length, nor was noise, experimental improvisation, or any sibling, cousin, or neighbor of rock & roll. Psychic… Powerless just took everything, including a compelling sense of postpunk music as a premise for extreme (and often very funny) drama, and mashed it together under Paul Leary’s unshaped guitar. Gibby Haynes’s Texas wail perked up with his free-verse associations over the guitar and bass and the roiling, repetitive drums, and the whole thing sounded like brilliance. Lest one think it came from a graduate-school course in postmodernism, it warrants pointing out that the Buttholes were genuinely as mad as their sounds; they ratcheted up the temperature on their experiments and LSD-drenched road shows over the course of their next several albums (Rembrandt Pussyhorse, Hairway to Steven, and Locust Abortion Technician). But Psychic… Powerless remains a towering achievement–or a tunneling achievement, digging under the skin for a fully visceral impact that sticks to the ribs like nothing else from the 1980s’ postpunk panoply. –Andrew Bartlett

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