Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge

This evokes 80s college radio rock, Husker Du, glimmers of the Meat Puppets, and a touch of Swans. I can see how much it influenced Nirvana, not likely the other way around. I loved the sonic sound of this although there weren't a lot of hooks. All around though, I enjoyed this one.

Better than Coldplay

Somewhere in the nexus of punk and the emerging alternative /grunge wave.

Punk rock, wasn't bad

The opening track sounded like I was about to hear some late 60s heavy psychedelia...too bad the rest of the album didn't follow that sound. The rest sounds like a garage band demo. Slacker singing, fuzz guitars. I can acknowledge that these guys were ahead of the curve (and I liked Superfuzz Bigmuff), but It's no surprise these guys didn't make it huge. I'd call it a 2.5 and I'll round up since at least it's mostly listenable. Favorite tracks: Who You Drivin' Now (actually a fun track unlike most of the others), Move Out.

Grunge was a huge part of my teenage musical years, but I didn't hear much of this.

More garagey than I might have thought, but I like that about it

Lovely mix of rock and punk

I’m at a 4.5 that I will bump down to a 4, but I’ll be damned if I’m not struggling with giving it a 5 just for the hell of it.

Welcome back to Mudhoney; we got Superfuzz Bigmuff as the 45th album of the whole thing, and I gave it a 4, mainly for “a hint of repetition in the styles of each song that does become a bit apparent once that initial wave of energy washes away”. 462 days later, my brain is a bit more forgiving of grunge-adjacent “repetition”. It is, however, not totally forgiving, hence the struggle between bumping it down or bumping it up. This is, at bare minimum, a 4 to my ears – it’s just some kick-ass grunge, and another example of Seattle in 1991 being the closest equivalent to the Garden of Eden there’s ever been in the world of music.

So, why the struggle then? Honestly, if I had to guess, I think the album just feels long. At 42 minutes, it’s a little under double the runtime of “Superfuzz Bigmuff”, so I think some of the luster just slowly erodes away over the course of the album. There’s never a decline in quality, because every track here is pretty good, but there’s just a decline in a listener’s tolerance. I don’t think this album fully does enough to keep the listener’s attention for its entire runtime, & while I know you can’t go full-throttle for the ENTIRE album, I had phases throughout listening to it where I entered less of a “zen state” and more of a fugue state. That’s not me calling the album boring, but I think there are portions in a number of tracks that coast for a bit, followed by extremely subtle transitions into the next segment of the song, in a way that sort of just sneaks up on the listener… but without the sort of “wow” factor that’s more typical of grunge of this era. That’s the “fugue” state I’m talking about, because I had to rewind every time it happened just so my brain could fully catch it.

So, is that my fault as a listener, or their fault as composers? Is it anyone’s fault, really? The answer is no, no, and definitely not. It’s their style, and I think it works well enough. Even if I don’t fully vibe with it, it’s not anything egregious enough to ruin the album, but it does bump it down to a 4 for me. It also doesn’t quite stand next to its contemporaries – I do feel like if I gave this a 5, it would be within the same space as Nevermind or Ten, and I just don’t think it’s there. That said, I do recommend this a lot; I don’t think it’s deserving of the 2.83 average on the site. Maybe with a few more listens, I’ll go back up to a 5 anyway. For now, it’s a bump down to a 4, but it’s still a pretty enjoyable 42 minutes, and a pretty good album.

Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge and to listen to this album because its certainly a very good album. I saw that a critic from Entertainment Weekly compared this album to a Black Sabbath if it were sped up and had a bit of humor and while i can see that, i would more easily compare it to the grunge contemporaries of it's time such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam. I don't like this album as much as i like the offerings from the two i already mentioned but i still think its very good. The music was fast and fun and, of course, had plenty of humor and quirk to it and while the vocals are a bit awkward at first, they still fit the songs well. I really enjoyed this album and think its a good addition to all the other grunge albums of 1991.
Best Song: Don't Fade IV
Worst Song: Generation Genocide

I'm not big on grunge, so this was always going to be a long 40 minutes. There's honestly bits of this album that I enjoy, but it's disconnected, and drowned out by the sheer amount of everything else.

Biased since I went to a concert of them recently. Singer still has a great voice after all these years. One of my favorite grunge albums, the playing is superb and the songs are all really active and hyped. Gotta compensate for the low score this has as well.

Fun album. Interesting music with an edge, but also a sense of humor.

Los protogrunges. Tengo guardada Good enough que parece ser lo mejor. Es complicado encajar hoy en día esta música, incluso más que antes. No es rock, no es punk, no es pop, ... es todo a la vez. Interesante como parte de una historia, pero no me ha emocionado.

Good old classic grunge.

Enjoyed this, more good grunge from the Mudhoney lads! This one probably doesn't need to be on the 1001 list, given that Superfuzz Bigmuff is so great!

Really good, but nothing particularly stood out to me aside from Broken Hands.

This was pretty gooood. i liked it. It is a little long, but I just like the genre, so it wasn't a big deal.
Still, It's only gonna be a stroong 3

I've enjoyed a few Mudhoney songs in the past, and I understand their importance in the foundation of the grunge genre. That said, this is my first full-album listen to them and I'm unfortunately not that impressed with Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.

Aside from a few decent jams with "Let It Slide", "Good Enough", "Thorn", "Into the Drink", and "Fuzzgun '91", there isn't much here that catches my attention or can be retained well in memory. I know these guys are technically proficient, and I certainly don't mind Mark Arm's abrasive vocal delivery, but the song construction on this album doesn't illicit much in the way of distinct hooks and the lyrics admittedly get repetitive in the nihilistic nature. Also not helping matters is the low-quality production that comes off as muted without any means for the percussion or the fuzzy guitars to have any punch, which is what you should have for garage music based on my previous listening to The Stooges, The Sonics, and The White Stripes.

I really wanted to like this album, because I get why Mudhoney is important to grunge and alternative rock, and again I've enjoyed songs from them in the past. But I'm sorry, this did not click for me as well as it should. Cherry-pick your favorites and go from there.

I liked it. A solid grunge album. But nothing that really grabbed on to me.

Real grunge for real people.