Thank god they went to Memphis. Elvis may have just died and Beale Street might have been facing the wrecking ball, but the city was still the ideal place to record these songs, largely because the music that inspired them—blues, rockabilly, country—was developed right there. The Cramps recognized something revolutionary in that first wave of rockabilly pervs and rock’n’roll hipshakers, who smuggled sex and lust and destruction into polite society. They irreverently yet affectionately cover two Roy Orbison songs, “Domino” and “Problem Child,” both originally released on Sun Records, and Lux weaponizes Charlie Feathers’ hiccupping delivery on “Can’t Hardly Stand It,” rending the words until all that remains are grunts and tics.
The Cramps reject much of what the punks embraced as confrontational—the breakneck tempos, the hopped-up amateurism—and replace it with mutated versions of old rhythms and riffs. These songs strut and creep along for the most part, as the bassless quartet dig into these vamps and grooves. The Cramps went through almost constant lineup changes during their first 10 years, but the fall 1977 version of the band was one of the most ingenious. Guitarist Bryan Gregory and drummer Nick Knox form a nimble rhythm section despite bashing songs out half the time, and Ivy holds court like a one-woman jukebox with every Sun single a quarter away. Their cover of Paul Revere & the Raiders’ “Hungry” buzzes with a stomping Nuggets energy, gradually building to a climax where Lux speaks in tongues and the rest of the band—including Chilton on organ—keeps jamming like a straight man to his ravings.
Much like Sam Phillips did at Sun in the ’50s, Chilton favors feel over technical precision. And there’s a whole lotta feel on Gravest Gravy. These songs shimmy and wobble precariously, held together by spit and gumption. That makes for some nice surprises, not least of which is opener “TV Set.” Somehow even rawer than the version that appears on Songs the Lord Taught Us, it’s an especially gruesome daydream, as Lux crafts furniture from his lover’s body parts and stows extra limbs in his icebox. It’s nothing quite as cynical as a murder ballad; instead, Ivy’s Twilight Zone riff and Lux’s talking-to-himself delivery lend it… well, not a sweetness, exactly. But they do make it sound like a love song. A deeply macabre love song, certainly, but one that at least attempts to thwart death and departure: “You’re well preserved in my Frigidaire.”
Death lends Gravest Gravy’s songs an unexpected poignancy. That aligns the Cramps with goth bands, but their preoccupation with mortality goes deeper, particularly as they excavate and animate long-forgotten songs. “Cat’s got nine lives, I’ve got one,” Lux declares on “Problem Child.” “When that life’s done, that’s all my fun!” The band relishes the silly irony that you should be on your best manners when death knocks. On their cover of “Rockin’ Bones,” he boldfaces the lines, “I wanna leave a happy memory when I go.” The song is a kind of self-eulogy, a daydream of an afterlife that lets you keep rockin’ even after your flesh rots. That brutal inevitability opens these songs up, as Lux and Ivy welcome the listener into their world of bad taste. They make room for the problem children and the teenage goo goo mucks in all of us: a space away from the larger, stupider world we’re forced to inhabit every day. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go go go!” Lux yells during “Weekend on Mars,” transforming that common rock’n’roll refrain into an invitation to a wild, weird party full of freaks. Just don’t fucking stop the take, for God’s sake.
