Mudhoney - Digital Garbage

Since the late '80s, Mudhoney - the Seattle-based foursome whose muck-crusted version of rock, shot through with caustic wit and battened down by a ferocious low end - has been a high-pH tonic against the ludicrous and the insipid. Digital Garbage opens with the swaggering "Nerve Attack," which can be heard as a nod both to modern-life anxiety and the ever-increasing threat of warfare. The album's title comes from the outro of "Kill Yourself Live," which segues from a revved-up Arm organ solo into a bleak look at the way notoriety goes viral. Arm says: "people really seem to find validation in the likes-and then there's Facebook Live, where people have streamed torture and murder, or, in the case of Philando Castile, getting murdered by a cop. In the course of writing that song, I thought about how, once you put something out there online, you can't wipe it away. It's always going to be there-even if no one digs it up, it's still out there floating somewhere."