Details

Childish Prodigy is the complete album that KVs been keeping hidden up his plaid sleeve. He gives us nine absolutely realized cuts (most by hometown master- engineer Jeff Zeigler) with an appropriate level of fidelity that, in a just world, would find the same warm welcome on FM radio that hes received this year from those with their ears to the underground.

Tunes like Hunchback and Inside Looking Out show the absolute power the Violators hold. Its Mike Zanghi dominating his thunder kit on the former, and Michael Johnson banging in a primitive caveman thud on the latter. These tracks dig in and drive hard like Crazy Horse truckin along the Autobahn. Kurts same steady hands guide the pretty-sounding and vulnerable route of Overnite Religion and Blackberry Song. The paranoid monologue of Dead Alive, and the tense, though sunny Amplifier should shame all the lightweight singer-song- writer types into pawning Lucille and patching things up with their fathers.

And then theres the fan-favorite Freak Train. This ones got all the KV moves... A pounding and relentless rhythm (this time supplied by Roland 707), a web of electric-fin- gerpicking, chiming swells of feedback by Kurt and Adam Granduciel, and a boss sax solo coaxed from the lungs of Jesse Trbovich. Its a real propulsive romp through some mutant-filled regional rail network in Viles mind.

Let the lazy scribes speculate on Kurts influences. Bruce, Suicide, Neil, Spacemen, Patton, Velvets, dozens of under- sung loners with guitars, whoever. But KV doesnt so much borrow the moves of his elders as he does swallow them up and spit them back as if they were his all along. Listen to him lead the Violators through Monkey by the Dim Stars for proof. Each one of these tunes sounded classic the day it was committed to tape. Classic.

"