Though they’ve been making music since 1973, and released their first lp in 1979, Portland, Oregon’s Smegma are a hard group to get a handle on. It’s not just the risk of googling the word “smegma” with reckless abandon, the collective operate under pseudonyms, record infrequently, and do their best to confound listeners with a ramshackle soup of mis-matched sounds. A collaborative album and tour with Wolf Eyes helped Smegma to resurface in the new millennium, and Rumblings rides the trash-strewn wave of enthusiasm they’ve sparked in a new generation of noise fans.
Though they’ve been at it for over thirty years, Smegma still play with a combination of irreverence and naiveté, they’ve certainly not fallen into the pit of overly refined smoothness that sometimes swallows bands of their ilk over such a duration of existence. Smegma continue to be explorers, and, just like the pioneers of aviation, while they sometimes hit upon great results, they’re also prone to more unsuccessful results. But, unlike the early fliers, Smegma’s hits and misses aren’t always easily differentiated between. Electronics, rock instrumentation, woodwinds, and samples all play into the mix, usually mingling rather haphazardly, with occasional interludes of surf-inspired proto-rock. Poet & music writer Richard Meltzer contributes absurdist and nonsensical lyrics via his bizarre strain of the stream-of-consciousness technique. His surprisingly plain and, for lack of a better term, normal voice is in contrast with the decidedly unfamiliar music it fronts, which makes for an unsettling combination at times, but isn’t that part of what Smegma’s about?
For many listeners, Rumblings will be the first Smegma they’ll hear. This is why, despite its spotty quality, its worth a listen. Smegma’s variety of amateurish noisemaking has become less rare in the three decades they’ve been active, but there’s definitely something to be said for this troupe, who were not only pioneers, but also a group of people who dove headlong into the aesthetic, both in music, and in their everyday life, and that’s something that’s hard not to respect.
