Kyle Meredith with... Urge Overkill скачать в хорошем качестве

Kyle Meredith with... Urge Overkill

#UrgeOverkill on Selling Out, Sizing Up, and Getting Demoted by Lobster: The 25 Years of Saturation Ask Urge Overkill about the so-called backlash to their major-label debut Saturation, and they’ll tell you there wasn’t any. Not really. “There was that rumble of sellouts and all that,” Nash Kato shrugs. “But no one ever says to your face, ‘Hey, you were stupid to sign that huge record deal.’” By 1993, UO had done their time in the Touch and Go trenches. Saturation was not a betrayal—it was the payoff. “We’d already liked that job,” King explains, referring to the indie years. “And at the time, Geffen was the best label out there. Highly creative, smart people. They put everything they had behind this record.” Everything, including a sound big enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Pearl Jam and Nirvana, who just so happened to take Urge on tour during their respective cultural tsunamis. Saturation didn’t just sound more expensive than their previous work. It was. “We didn’t really know what a demo was until Geffen asked to hear some,” says Nash. “And we were like, ‘What are you talking about?’ We gave them what we thought were the tracks.” Half the record was essentially demos, half of it polished later with the luxury of time, budget, and an ancient Neve console that “looked like a submarine.” Butch Vig and the Dust Brothers—the so-called “butchers”—helped hone a massive sound without steamrolling the band’s slightly jagged, slightly sleazy appeal. “They were very careful about preserving what they called the ‘Urge charm,’” King deadpans. “Which we hated.” Even Saturation’s crown jewel “Sister Havana” was born as a kind of dare. “We told the producers, ‘Make us sound like the radio.’ It was the antithesis of everything we’d done,” King says. “It was almost like a joke. Like, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if we sounded perfect?’” Butch and Dust knew all the Beatles tricks, too. “They’d stand on the board to prove it was indestructible,” Nash recalls. “Those knobs weren’t going anywhere.” The joke, of course, was on them. The record worked. “Sister Havana” blew up. Suddenly Urge Overkill were playing to thousands of people, sandwiched between the cultural leviathans of the ‘90s: Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Their first show with Nirvana, nobody even knew who they were. “They showed up in a van and a trailer,” King recalls. “By the second or third gig, they were bumping venues, and by Europe they were outselling Michael Jackson.” As for Pearl Jam, “They were already the biggest band in the world,” King says, casually. “They played hockey stadiums in Oklahoma—and someone flew in lobsters to show how classy Oklahoma City was.” Naturally, the band couldn’t care less. “You don’t impress Pearl Jam with lobster.” Backstage luxury aside, the experience was a crash course in rock superstardom. “You just hang on and enjoy the ride,” Nash says. “We had to switch to a tour bus just to keep up.” Despite being thrust into the “grunge” moment, Saturation sounded nothing like the plaid-clad angst that surrounded it. “We were jumping around in velvet suits singing about cars and girls,” King says. “We were like the anti-grunge grunge band.” It didn’t matter. They got on those tours because the headliners liked them. “Back then, bands still picked their own openers,” Nash says. “It was a tradition. A statement of taste.” The band’s “No Alternative” comp track “Take a Walk” (originally titled “View of the Rain”) was another fluke success. “We didn’t have anything left,” King admits. “We cranked it out in 24 hours. The butchers retitled it. It just kind of wrote and arranged itself.” They even had string players. “Which we’d never done before,” Nash says. “It added so much.” Now, 25 years later, Saturation is getting a long-overdue vinyl reissue—original colors and all. A new album is also in the can, albeit delayed by geography. “We’re scattered across the country now,” King says. “But we chipped away at it over the last couple years.” There’s a weird irony to it all. “Take a Walk” and “Dropout”—two of the weirdest, most minimal tracks—remain fan favorites. “Even King and I were like, ‘Huh. Okay,’” Nash admits. “But I get it. There’s something seductive about a song that just pulls you in. Even if it started as a mystery project in Studio B.” Urge Overkill’s legacy is one of intentional contradictions. Sleaze with sincerity. Major-label shine with basement attitude. Velvet suits on grunge tours. But somehow, they made it stick. “It’s a record we made a million years ago,” Nash says. “But it seems like yesterday.”