Sometimes it’s tough getting people to notice you when you’re just a regular ol’ rock band. A fascinating case in point was the Black Cat’s Monday night headliner, Eyes Adrift, a band with a very successful pedigree ---guitarist Curt Kirkwood (ex Meat Puppets), drummer Bud Gaugh (ex-Sublime) and bassist Krist Novoselic (ex a little band called Nirvana) ---who drew fans that barely filled a third of the Cat’s main hall.
The trio maintains they’re just like any other new group touring behind their debut album, but the lack of a large crowd lent the hour-long show an anti-climatic air. Fortunately, the music fared a little better, as Kirkwood’s sprawling, deep-fried guitar patterns snaked through Novoselic’s solid bottom in a style that recalled nothing so much as late-period Meat Puppets romps. Gaugh’s playing was competent but little else, and the best songs turned out to be middle-tempo grooves like “Alaska” and “What I Said”, where the group established a sturdy block from which Kirkwood could shave off curly guitar runs. Novoselic took the mike for the pleasantly hooky “Inquiring Minds”, managed to fit in a couple of juicy anti-Bush rants and drew some nasty burps from his trademark low-slung bass during a set-closing noise brawl with Kirkwood.
Ultimately, the gig shook down as solid effort from an entertaining, but not good-enough-to-make-anyone-forget-their-first-group trio, who seemed at times to be less than thrilled to be trudging through a Monday night’s work. But then, no one said being a regular ol’ rock band was gonna be easy.
Washington Post, 2002
