Puddle of Mudd
Come Clean
FLAWLESS/GEFFEN
Stuck in the muck
If The Who's "Who's Next" is the finest album ever made with a picture of someone urinating on the cover, Puddle of Mudd's major-label debut, Come Clean (which features a child relieving himself in the bushes), could be the worst. It's hard to imagine a record more indebted to the leading lights of grunge and less imaginative about what to do with that debt. "Control" and "Drift and Die" are so derivative of Alice in Chains that early Days of the New seems almost visionary in comparison, and singer Wes Scantlin's every utterance raises the bar for future Kurt Cobain impressions. Only "She Hates Me" distinguishes itself from the surrounding morass: It retools "Sliver," Nirvana's most lighthearted tune, into a puppy-dog-cute instance of self-loathing that could stand head to toe with Blink-182's perky bits of nastiness. Otherwise, to paraphrase Come Clean's lengthy, portentious final cut, Puddle of Mudd piss away every chance to distinguish themselves.
-BOB KEMP
