Mark Arm doesn’t have time for love songs. Never really did, but definitely not now. Mudhoney’s 2018 album Digital Garbage saw the grunge legends sharpening their already jagged edges, slicing through the political and social climate with a mix of fury, sarcasm, and that trademark Mudhoney sneer. In conversation, Arm is as direct as his lyrics, never mincing words about the state of the world, the media’s role in it, or the absurdity of it all.
“There's a lot of crazy, crazy stuff going on right now, and I would feel like I wasn't doing my part if I was just ignoring it,” Arm says. “I actually wish the situation wasn't the way it was and I would be free to sing about sea breezes and walks on the beach or something.” The way he says it, you get the sense he’s not joking.
Arm and the rest of Mudhoney started writing the album in early 2017, still reeling from the presidential election and the immediate fallout. “Before the election, I was like, ‘Man, I can't wait for this thing to be over with so I won't have to think about this anymore.’” Then the results came in, and any hopes of relief vanished. “Once Trump was elected, the first few months were super scary. The only thing that saved things from going as terribly as I thought was just incompetence.”
That incompetence—and the media’s complicity in it—provided plenty of fuel for Digital Garbage. The track “Paranoid Core” skewers the conspiracy theory ecosystem that’s taken over the news cycle, while “Kill Yourself Live” takes aim at social media’s obsession with instant fame, no matter the cost. “I'm not on social media, but I see how excited people get when they're talked about,” Arm says. “I get it. I feel the same way when someone talks about our band, but I’m not gonna adjust my life or point of view for it.”
Arm’s media diet isn’t limited to watching the chaos unfold. One song, “Please Mr. Gunman,” was directly inspired by a Fox News segment covering a church shooting. “Someone on Fox & Friends said, ‘Well, at least if these people were gonna die, at least they died in church where they're ready to go.’” He lets that sink in before adding, “That was so sickening to me that within a day, I had that song.”
Not that Mudhoney is new to tackling the grotesque. Arm reflects on past work, including 1998’s Tomorrow Hit Today, which saw them experimenting with a bluesier sound, much to the critics' delight (and occasional misunderstanding). “People saw Jim Dickinson’s name on it and thought, ‘Oh, this must be their blues record,’ but that sound had been with us since the beginning.”
The album was also their last hurrah with Reprise Records. “Our A&R guy, David Katznelson, was always in our corner, but the new head of A&R wanted to drop us before we even recorded. We knew it was our last thing for a major label, so we blew through the budget. Might as well.”
Then there’s Poison Water, the song that got Mudhoney on the set of Tommy Boy in the mid-’90s. “We were playing during a scene with Chris Farley, and he kept trying to crack us up. He kept making crazier suggestions, and when we didn’t react, he finally shouted, ‘What do I have to do to get a laugh out of you guys?!’” Even more inexplicably, Gary Busey was on set that day, despite not being in the film. “No idea why,” Arm says. “Just Busey being Busey, I guess.”
Reflecting on Mudhoney’s longevity, Arm isn’t sentimental. “We've never been meant to be a big radio band, and that was never anything we aimed for. But if some kid is bashing away in a garage somewhere, rock & roll is alive. That’s all that matters.”
Thirty years in, still swinging. The world may be on fire, but Mudhoney is more than happy to toss another match into the pile.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
