Day 51: Wipers — Is This Real?
Like I imagine is the case for many, my introduction to Pacific Northwest punk pioneers Wiper comes via Nirvana. Though I wasn’t old enough to hear or read Kurt Cobain name check them in an interview, I can thank multiple Wiper covers on comprehensive box set With the Lights Out for attempting to point me in the right direction.
I say “attempt” because it took me a full 13 years to get around to listening to their seminal debut album Is This Real? When I did, though, tracing the lineage from Greg Sage’s trio to the band that “invented” grunge and broke punk in 1991 is an easy task. But to think of Wipers as just the band that presaged Nirvana feels reductive. Because Is This Real? is an interesting survey of the era before “punk” and “new wave” diverged as descriptors, and a window into what the future of the eighties underground would hold.
Like any great band, Wipers showed an early aptitude for ripping up and recontextualizing the work of those who came immediately before them, transforming old ideas into new and exciting concepts in the process. “Mystery” feels like an angstier take on the power-pop formula put forth by late-70’s radio rockers like Elvis Costello and The Cars. It can be read as a straightforward song, but in context it’s a revealing look at how a fiesty genre could draw from more benign influences. The same goes with songs like “Tragedy” and “Up Front”, which spice up the Ramones’ brilliantly braindead take on bubblegum pop, opening up new avenue of exploration for bands that would follow.
Of course as much as Wipers knew how to artfully copy, Is This Real? finds the Portlanders trailblazing through uncharted territory just as often. “Return of the Rat” is the more famous Nirvana cover that opens things up, and its take on proto-grunge never relinquishes the listener’s attention. The rhythm section of Dave Koupal and Sam Henry never take their foot off the gas, even as Sage rips through a buzzsaw solo. At the other end of the spectrum, fellow Cobain favorite “D-7” sounds like a brooding cauldron of brooding doom that spills into a kind of thinking man’s punk. Over the same kind of bass cadence that would form the backbone of “Breed”, late album cut “Potential Suicide” feels like an anxious taking on free jazz punctuated by moments of mounting panic.
In essence, Wipers were able to survey and synthesize much more of the musical spectrum than many of their scene contemporaries in 1980, and their influence in shaping what would come is hard to overstate. Is This Real? Manages to feel rangy without losing its sense of cohesiveness. It might be giving the group too much credit to think of it as the missing link that explains how grunge came to be. But at the very least, it’s an interesting look at an expansive take on punk rock that developed in isolation from the LA and New York scenes that shaped the emerging genre’s earliest years here in the states.
This is Day 51 in my 100 albums in 100 days series, where I review a new album or EP I haven’t heard in full before every day through December 31st. Check out yesterday’s post or see the full archives for more.
