Gas Huffer - One Inch Masters, 1994

01 - Crooked Bird
02 - Mr. Sudbuster
03 - More of Everything
04 - Stay in Your House
05 - 14th & Jefferson
06 - Walla Walla Bang Bang
07 - Appendix Gone
08 - Chicken Foot
09 - What's in the Bag?
10 - Hand of the Nomad
11 - Quasimodo '94
12 - No Smoking
13 - Action/Adventure
14 - Goat No Have

Now when Lemonade for Vampires has arrived and I became a happy owner of Gas Huffer's complete studio discography (not too easy thing when you live in Europe), I can confirm that One Inch Masters is the best of their albums to me. Melodic diversity and overall quality of the material are the points which make this record stand out most significantly in the band’s body of work.

Gas Huffer is another artist I've got introduced to through my Prague's favorite Maximum Underground. A garage/punk quartet from Seattle – the mother-town of grunge music. They possess both the great energy and tons of irony blending into the sparkling songwriting - “goofing around” as they put it themselves.

Formed in 1989 and disbanded in 2006, GH is one of those groups which never went through a lineup change. There is something very right in it.

The frontman Matt Wright wouldn't probably get a prize for his vocal talents alone, but that charismatic energy he's putting into the performance generously compensates for all possible lacks. I mean, Mark Knopfler also doesn’t have that much of a voice and still he sounds.

Sincerely brilliant record. What’s In The Bag?, 14th &Jefferson, Stay in Your House, Crooked Bird... - the whole tracklist is outstanding indeed. How many songs do you know about the contents of a bag or discarding an appendix in general? And then how many good ones? These are the ones.

Guess it’s too late to order, but for every album release prior to the 6th album they were creating a comic book which included the lyrics as well. (The bassist Joe Newton is also known as a deputy art director for Rolling Stone magazine by the way). Without those at hand, I managed to scratch together only few tracks’ lyrics from the record - thus would appreciate anyone willing to share some texts.

And just in case someone would care to check on my humble opinion, here goes the rest of them sorted by the level of personal appeal:

One Inch Masters, 1994 - see above.

The Inhuman Ordeal of Special Agent Gas Huffer, 1996 - Tiny Life is a gem.

Lemonade for Vampires, 2005 - more serious, still wild.

Just Beautiful Music, 1998 - a touch softer, as the cover suggests.

The Rest of Us, 2002 - no, it’s not a compilation.

Integrity, Technology & Service, 1992; Janitors of Tomorrow, 1991 - the two first albums from Empty Records are punkier and noisier than later work - not exactly my style, but I imagine might be the opposite for someone else.


Gas_Huffer_One_Inch_Masters_lyrics_incomplete.txt

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Next time - something more classical from The List.