Acoustic Osbourne

22 July 2014 | 10:36 am | Tom Hersey

It never felt like I had an obligation to anybody other than I was going to make music that was good.

I’m always ready to try something new and see how it goes,” says Buzz Osborne in a kind of matter-of-fact monotone that doesn’t break for the entire conversation. That’s just about all the thought the lauded singer/guitarist, who has been melting faces with his mega-driven sludge-rock guitar riffs for over 30 years, gave to trading in his wall of amplifiers for an acoustic guitar.

Apparently that’s about all the thought he’s put into any of the major left turns in his career thus far. Like when Osborne and long-time Melvins cohort Dale Crover decided to add a second drummer to the band, or when they wrote an album with Trevor Dunn playing upright bass, or when they wrote an album where Crover, one of the all-time greatest alt-rock drummers, was playing bass instead of drums. All the decisions that have made The Melvins a kooky, brilliant and perpetually misunderstood band have been exercises in ‘seeing how it goes’.

“It’s a formula that doesn’t really have one,” Osborne reckons. But then Buzz, doesn’t that lack of formula hamstring the band at times? Don’t you have people all the time coming up to you and pestering you to play songs from the Atlantic years? Or to play the Melvins Lite stuff?

“I honestly can’t keep up with what anybody wants. So I’ve just never let that worry me. And I figured I have good taste; if I write music that I like, then other people will like it."

“Yeah, there are those people. But they tend to just fall by the wayside. And there are plenty of bands out there that are willing to do whatever people want them to. And people shouldn’t expect us to. That’s it. I mean, really. It never felt like I had an obligation to anybody other than I was going to make music that was good. That was it. I didn’t really feel like I was obligated to make sure such and such people like this. Well I have no idea what people are going to like; all I know is if I like it, and then I’ll just take it from there.

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“I honestly can’t keep up with what anybody wants. So I’ve just never let that worry me. And I figured I have good taste; if I write music that I like, then other people will like it. I don’t have any other criteria than that. And it’s worked for me really well.”

That bravery made his debut acoustic full-length another lauded left turn from a project that was initially only going to be several shows and a limited edition 10” record.

“The ten” was all it was going to be, and then I realised I could make a whole album. And I mean I only pressed 500 of that ten”, so it wasn’t like a full release… But then I was thinking about what else I was going to do with the project and then once I get going on something it’s kind of hard to stop, I’m definitely a workaholic.

“I just realised that I could probably do it – one whole album – and then have Ipecac put it out as opposed to the ten-inch that only 500 people would hear. So I just filled out the whole thing, and ended up with a bunch of extra material that I’ll probably save for something else...”

Each of the 17 tracks on This Machine Kills Artists clock in at around two or three minutes while the average Melvins LP – Osborne lets slip that another Melvins four-piece LP should be out in October – has eight tracks clocking in at on average six to seven minutes.

“I don’t know why, it just kind of worked out that way. It feels like a little acoustic guitar goes a long way. I guess I never have any idea about how long songs are going to be until we start recording and getting into it. You never know, it’s not the kind of thing where you can just decide, ‘I’m going to write a long song.’”

This Machine Kills Artists is quite blatantly a reference to the inscription on Woody Guthrie’s guitar, so what artists acted as inspiration for Osborne’s acoustic turn?

“None other than the obvious ones – the Bob Dylans or whoever, y’know. I mean, he never listened to anybody and pretty much did what he wanted. And he had a massive career with it… I knew I didn’t want to do acoustic stuff that sounded like Bob Dylan or Woody Guthrie… that was kind of the point of the name.

“I’ve been prefering to just let people decide what it means. I’m not going to go into any graphic detail about it… Let people decide things for themselves and usually they’ll complicate it into something that doesn’t exist, and they will make it something better… You never know.”