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Mark Pickerel and His Praying
Hands
Snake in the Radio
(Bloodshot)
First Appeared in The Music Box, May 2006, Volume 13, #5
Written by John Metzger
In the late ’80s and early ’90s, grunge and alt-country simultaneously came
of age, and although the music of each movement superficially was quite
different, the two styles shared a similar sense of disaffected angst. As the
original drummer for Screaming Trees, Mark Pickerel was at the heart of the
Seattle scene when Nirvana burst into the limelight — for a brief time during
the late ’80s, he backed Krist Novoselic and Kurt Cobain — and by all accounts,
Screaming Trees should have held an equal hand in its bid for stardom. Van and
Gary Lee Conner’s inability to cooperate, however, caused such tension and
turmoil within the band that it had trouble getting off the ground. In the
meantime, Pickerel left to pursue an eclectic array of his own interests. Over
the course of the past 15 years, he unassumingly has amassed a solid body of
work by performing with the post-grunge collective Truly, supporting the likes
of Neko Case and Brandi Carlile, and most importantly, fronting The Dark
Fantastic, an outfit that increasingly appears to be the linchpin that holds
together the disparate strands of his solo career.
With the release of his latest effort Snake in the Radio — the first
to be issued under his own name — Pickerel further scales back the production
flourishes, leaving behind The Dark Fantastic’s psychedelicized meshing of Pink
Floyd, Buffalo Springfield, and Echo and the Bunnymen. In doing so, he reveals
another act that not only has weighed quite heavily upon his post-Screaming
Trees output, but also has helped to blaze the original alt-country trail: the
seminal, roots-rock band The Knitters. Considering that Chicago’s Bloodshot
Records almost singlehandedly carried the torch for X’s country-punk offshoot in
the years that spanned the group’s dissolution and reformation, it’s only
fitting that the label is also behind Pickerel’s latest transformation.
Regrettably, Snake in the Radio, which was produced by Steve Fisk —
who, not coincidentally, also was an integral part of Screaming Trees’ early
efforts — never succeeds fully in transcending its influences. In fact, large
portions of the endeavor — from the jittery A Town too Fast for Your Blues
to the brooding Don’t Look Back — dip so liberally into The Knitters’
bread-and-butter that the album frequently sounds like a full-blown tribute set.
Nevertheless, whenever Pickerel allows his more experimental side to bubble to
the surface, the outing becomes considerably more interesting, if not
necessarily stronger. On several occasions throughout the affair, most notably
on Come Home Blues, he leans upon Burt Bacharach’s formula for ’60s pop,
while on Sin Tax Dance he dabbles in the sort of commercialized indie
rock that The Velvet Underground unleashed on Loaded. More expectedly,
bits of Jim Morrison and The Doors peek around the serpentine curls of pedal
steel that ring through Forest Fire as well as the drearily melancholy
Town without the Blues. In the end, one wishes that, in copping ideas from
his predecessors, Pickerel had shown a little less reverence and restraint, but
what he ultimately delivers is, at least, an admittedly strong replication of
his heroes, one that inevitably lays a solid foundation for his future
explorations.  ½
Snake in the Radio is
available from Amazon.com.
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Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2006 The Music Box
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