dUg Pinnick - Naked

After most of the 00's bumming around with a slew of side projects and extending his resume with a long list of guest appearances dUg dropped his most recent solo album since 2007's Strum Sum Up with 2013's Naked. As was the norm for his earlier records everything you hear is done by him, but Naked stands out from his past releases chiefly thanks to dUg's first attempt at providing his own drumming rather than getting his partner in King's X Jerry Gaskill to pound the skins for him.

Although I've listened to Pinnick's previous solo albums prior to hearing Naked none of them really grabbed me besides his debut, Massive Grooves From the Electric Church of Psychofunkadelic Grungelism Rock Music and portions of his next one Pineappleskunk. Massive Grooves pretty much sums up Pinnick's style of music, and this newest apple doesn't fall far from the 12-string tree. Opener "What You Gonna Do?" casts a plaintive light over the rest of the record while darker numbers like "Heart Attack" and the weirdly ominous "Take Me Away From You" let everyone know that happiness and friendship aren't the topics at hand. dUg is a plain dude and this is a plain record - there really aren't any tricks he's got up his sleeve besides him doing his own drumming, and... well, let's just say that there's a reason Jerry did the drumming in King's X and not him. The first couple of songs actually sound quite good - "If You Fuk Up" and "Courage" are solid no-frills rockers and that Pinnick crunch we all know and love is plentiful on tracks like "Take Me Away From You" and "Speeding Love".

Things run out of steam towards the end as the song lengths start to elongate. "I Hope I Don't Lose My Mind" works but "Heart Attack", "The Point", and "I'm Not Gonna Freak Out" really stretch the limits of the compositions on offer here, especially as Naked never gels together completely - either the drumming stumbles, or a verse gets repeated once too often or slips into trite-land, or dUg's vocals are astoundingly mixed too loud and drown out the music. His talents as a bass player, vocalist, and writer are all indisputable, especially with all the high quality work he's been putting out with KXM and PGP, but all of them mixed into the same pot without anything else ensures that too much of the material here just never gets off the ground. While Pinnick is assuredly at his best as part of an ensemble, Naked isn't a total write-off - but if you're just getting into his stuff, I would look elsewhere for an entry point.

C