Coffin Shaker: Clutch – Earth Rocker

I recently got Earth Rocker on vinyl, so I decided to give it a review. Some bands just sound better on vinyl. I am a big believer that if you haven’t heard the Doors on vinyl, you haven’t really heard the Doors, and while there are other old bands that the same can be said of, Clutch is perhaps the best example for me of a modern band that fits that same bill. I’m 37 years old, so a part of my earliest music listening experiences are associated with vinyl, it being the format my mother utilized, and while I did find the rediscovery of the medium kind of hokey at first, I am pretty glad that it not only stuck around, but that I got in to it as well. There’s something really fun about vinyl.

Earth Rocker is a return to the harder, sharper edge of Clutch after the bluesier, more jam-centered albums of Beale Street and Strange Cousins, back to that Blast Tyrant formula of balancing the two parts of the Clutch persona into a really quality listen. The bluesish parts are still here, and on full display in songs like “Gone Cold,” which also happens to be the song on this album that you swear was on a different Clutch album, “The Face” and “Scavengers,” which is a bonus track from a deluxe version of the record, not found on the vinyl, which is a real shame.  

Clutch is one of those bands that’s “just a rock band,” but that’s not at all a bad thing. It’s more a response to the need to classify everything, that sense that every band needs to be crosslisted with others for easy reference. With Clutch, that’s hard to do. Most of the time I see them labeled as being like a stoner rock band, or some kind of stoner metal band, but I don’t think that those are accurate tags at all. They have a real jam-y quality, but they aren’t a jam band. They have that kind of grooviness that the “stoner” bands have, I guess. They also make pot references on occasion, and I guess that is actually enough for the “stoner” music scene to claim them. They’ve got a real Blues sensibility, far more than some of the more metal bands that claim that trait, like Corrosion of Conformity. Clutch’s blues qualities are something along the lines of those of Motorhead (still not ready to talk about it……), where it is certainly a huge part of the music, but they utilize it in a way that is just theirs, and so, trying to talk about them as a Blues-y rock band doesn’t really satisfy. We were at a gathering a few weekends back and talking with friends about bands, I tried to think of who Clutch ‘sounds like,’ and I just kept drawing a blank. I’m not sure they need to ‘sound like’ anyone. They are distinctive enough to make it difficult to compare them to any other bands, and yet familiar enough that they’re instantly recognizable. That’s usually a terrific sign.