90s…Whatever: Alice Donut

 

I miss some of those fringe bands from the 90s.  Those bands that quietly disappeared, and you only think of when you run across them on streaming or mentioned in a music blog.

I don't know anyone so punk that Alternative Tentacles (the record company ran by Jello Biafra) was their favorite label.  There were a couple of bands on there I really liked, but Jello specialized in signing the most uncommerical acts around (Japanese noise band Zeni Geva, Wesley Willis, dykecore band Tribe 8, the Crucifucks, Dutch punk jazz band Dog Faced Hermans).

Another one of those love-em-or-hate-em bands signed to AT were Alice Donut.  I always thought Donut were kind of like what would have happened to the Smashing Pumpkins if they took a left turn at Gish, or maybe if Sonic Youth wanted to make big dumb rock. They were firmly in that Butthole Surfers/NoMeansNo/fIREHOSE camp of just being too weird in everything they did to become mainstream.

I always kind of dug that psychedelic punk thing they did.  Everything they recorded was pretty interesting, and 92's The Untidy Suicides of Your Degenerate Children is sort of a commercial (as it was) and artistic peak. They got a video played on public access shows and I really seriously love the album. 

That particular album is a song cycle of American angst that Allmusic has retroactively compared to the work of Marilyn Manson, which is odd but possibly fair. 

Even in the age of Lollapalooza and people like Daniel Johnston getting major label deals, AD were never going to crossover, but  they put their effort into making their most mainstream sounding album Pure Acid Park .  Unfortunately it’s kind of a dud to this listener and critics at large who it seems always compared it to the Butthole Surfers Electriclarryland. 

The band broke up soon after, but reunited in 2003 and since recorded three albums with 2009s Ten Glorious Animals coming out on Alternative Tentacles.

There seems to be a certain radio silence since 2016 when a new album was on the horizon but their Last Fm profile proclaims that they will record albums until they die