Records: Geraldine Fibber - Butch

By Joshua Westlund

Rock `n roll has always had just one subject: sex. And on Butch, the Geraldine Fibbers make one thing clear (if it wasn't already): sex can be the scariest thing in the world.

Lead Fibber Carla Bozulich does battle with her body, her image, and her desires. In the process, she explores issues of love, betrayal, friendship and childhood, by evoking precise, often graphic images. In "Toy Box," Bozulich sings, "My shell on top of your knotty fist with a speculum shoved up my cunt after hours." Bozulich's graphic realism is driven by her desire to know why sex often creates rather than cures loneliness. Her lyrics often read like prose pieces, unrestrained by regular rhyme schemes, which allows the frenetic rhythm of Bozulich's voice to take over.

The Fibbers have a knack for building up tension in verses and releasing it in an explosive chorus, a technique Nirvana perfected. But for Bozulich this isn't a passive-aggressive tendency, as it was for Nirvana. It's the way Bozulich expresses her emotional schizophrenia. Her songs explore what happens when the frail barrier between love and hate dissolves. In "Toy Box" she sings, "I shot my baby. It has to be love." Bozulich delights in creating intriguing lyrical puzzles (here's one: "I fucked my first fruit today / Lousy lay"). One puzzle I can't figure out is the cover of Can's "You Doo Right." If you read the lyrics on a literal level, it's an anthemic love song, with a seemingly sincere refrain: "Once I was blind, but now I see...you made a believer out of me." But by screaming the bridge (an apologetic mantra: "I was wrong / you were right") Bozulich turns the song on its head. In the end, the song collapses into cascades of noise. If Bozulich's ever been wrong, she'd be the last to admit it.

With the addition of noise wizard Nels Cline, the Fibbers have added a quirky, noisy edge to their blend of punk and country. Cline's the one guitarist on the planet who can school Thurston Moore--and here he does just that, often using a wire wisp or a toy gun instead of a guitar pick. Throughout Butch, Cline's inventive guitar work struggles against Bozulich's voice to get to the forefront of the mix.

Butch is a powerful meditation on sex and loneliness. It's also one of the most powerful "guitar rock" records I've heard since In Utero. But while Cobain battled his loneliness by insisting that loneliness is the thing that unites us, Bozulich basks in loneliness as a gift, something to be guarded. On "California Tuffy" she jubilantly sings, "I'll be alone forever / you will never get my heart." Bozulich wants you to want her, know that you'll never have her, and scare the shit out of you. (Virgin)

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