Steve Turner

"No-one gives a shit what you think. No-one gives a shit what you do. No-one gives a shit what you say, so you might as well do it anyway." - 'No-one Gives a Shit' - Steve Turner.



From the opening track on his new album, it appears that Steve Turner has decided to take a piece of his own advice. Much like Graeme Coxon had to separate himself from Blur to make music more to his liking (which coincidentally sounds a bit like Steve Turner) it seems that Mudhoney guitarist Turner has a creative itch he can only scratch when the rest of the band aren't looking. So off he went and recorded this, his 3rd album.



Musically, it is unsurprisingly from the same gene pool as Mudhoney but with less fuzz and more keyboards. Less Grunge, More Garage. Like his suprising and good previous album 'Bad Ideas' (not suprising that it was good, suprising that that's what a Steve Turner solo project sounds like) New Wave Punk Asshole continues Turner's apparent preoccupation with an approaching middle-age. Where 'Bad Ideas' was slightly melancholic, 'New Wave Punk Asshole', as the title suggests, is more self-deprecating, a shrug of the shoulders and a grumble at the ageing process.



All the songs have a certain charm and some are genuinely funny, Turner would make a great narrator in a sitcom. Here he is trying to get laid on Sex Date Saturday Night "We're not getting any younger, our relationships are pretty much failures, we might as well do it together" or this fantastic salvo on Stupid Blues "My friends are stupid, some of them are morons, I don't understand how we got to be so boring." A depressing thought for the rest of us when you think he still tours and records with Mudhoney.



A fine record of 16 little gems coming in under 35 minutes. Like the sitcom, I look forward to seeing what Slightly Grumpy Steve is up to in series 4.



Review: chimpovich (Nov 23rd 2006)



Skate Folk Is Not Dead.



Discography:

"Searching For Melody" CD, 2002.

"A Beautiful Winter" CD EP, 2004.

"Steve Turner And His Bad Ideas" CD 2004.

"New Wave Punk Asshole" CD (the LP was not released) 2006.