Cargo Records

Wildweed

Originally released in The U.K. in 1985 and finally in the U.S. in 1994, Wildweed has been out of print for eight years. It's been eight years that have been slowly building and adding to the legacy of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and his infamous band, The Gun Club.

Pierce's lyrics testified of his awareness of America's earliest history, a nation established at the barrel of a gun. Obsessed with an inevitable apocalyptic destiny, he took his lowlife background as an explanation for a feverish longing for decay. Sex, booze and drugs all claimed their share in a self-destructive lifestyle, culminating in an early death at the age of 37. Wildweed was the first of two solo albums Pierce made in between his Gun Club albums. Following in the footsteps of remarkable statements like Miami and The Las Vegas Story, the material presented here isn't all that different. The violence theme practically drips from the album cover, depicting Pierce with a dreamy look and a shotgun slung over his shoulder. Standing amidst what could be the last true vestige of an unspoiled, rural America, it's a fair bet that he's ready to shoot anything even slightly disturbing upon which he probably will utter one final howl before putting himself to rest as well. Plenty of those howls are scattered through Wildweed, which opens with a strong threesome of "Love and Desperation", "Sex Killer" and "Cleopatra Dreams On". In more than one way, "Love and Desperation" is the twin to The Fire Of Love's "Sex Beat". Apart from the infectious driving beat, one only has to compare the lyrics of the latter (I, I know your reasons/And I, I know your goals/We can f*ck forever/But you will never get my soul) to the former (Somebody hurts you, so you hurt me/So I hurt somebody else, who I have never seen/Who hurts somebody else, why on down the road/Who hurts somebody else who goes on home/With you) to conclude that Pierce's world is one in which love takes a wrong turn most of the time. "The Midnight Promise" makes a beautiful closing piece.