Wiggle (album)

Infobox Album | Name = Wiggle
Type = Album
Artist = Screeching Weasel

| Released = 1993
Recorded = 1992
Genre = Punk rock, pop punk
Label = Lookout!, Asian Man
Producer = Mass Giorgini
Reviews = *Allmusic Rating|4|5 [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:8l66mpzd9f8o link]
Last album = "Ramones"
(1992)
This album = "Wiggle"
(1993)
Next album = "Anthem for a New Tomorrow"
(1993)

"Wiggle" is the fourth full length album by Chicago's Screeching Weasel, and their second for California-based Lookout! Records. Their previous album, My Brain Hurts, had seen a sharp rise in the band's popularity and a shift in sound towards mid-tempo pop songs. With Wiggle, the band shifted gears yet again. Though several tracks retained the catchy, pop-punk sound, many others saw the band venturing into experiments with New Wave and some of the harder-edged sounds of the early LPs. Another major change was the amount of collaboration in songwriting. Rather than Ben Weasel being the sole author of the majority of the songs, Wiggle features a few credited to the entire band, one by guitarist Danny Vapid, and a couple with bassist (for only this album) Johnny Personality. In addition to this, there are three songs co-written by Joe King of The Queers, which were also recorded by his band. The album was received to mixed fanfare. Many expected a continuation of the previous album and were surprised by the experimentation and harder-edged production. Since its initial release, many of the songs have come to be regarded as the band's best. Others have not held up so well over time. The band has voiced some regrets about the recording of the album, which allowed each member a voice in the mixing of specific songs and resulted in a less cohesive sound. There have also been regrets about the songs chosen for the album in recent years. After a short time of being out of print, the album was remastered by producer Mass Giorgini and re-released with one extra track on Asian Man Records in 2005.

Track listing

# "Hanging Around" (Screeching Weasel) – 3:31
# "I'm Not in Love" (Weasel) – 2:00
# "One Step Beyond" (Weasel) – 3:04
# "I Was a High School Psychopath" (Vapid) – 2:07
# "Crying in My Beer" (Weasel) – 3:51
# "Slomotion" (Personality/Weasel) – 1:20
# "Like a Parasite" (King/Weasel) – 3:20
# "Joanie Loves Johnny" (Weasel) – 1:58
# "Second Floor East" (Weasel) – 2:58
# "Automatic Rejector" (Screeching Weasel) – 1:49
# "Jeannie's Got a Problem With Her Uterus" (Weasel) – 2:04
# "Sad Little Girl" (Personality/Vapid/Weasel) – 2:57
# "Ain't Got No Sense" (Kerr/Lewis/Mahon/Stipanitz) – 3:46
# "It's All in My Head" (Weasel) – 3:11
# "Teenage Slumber Party" (Jughead/Weasel) – 2:24 *
# "Danny Is a Wimp" (King/Weasel) – 1:00 *
# "Going Home" (Cometbus/Weasel) – 2:42 *
# "Fuck the World" (King/Weasel) **

* Only available on CD release
** Only available on 2005 re-release

Personnel

Ben Weasel - vocals

Jughead - guitar

Danny Vapid - guitar/backing vocals
Johnny Personality - bass

Dan Panic - drums

The songs

Right from the opening track, Wiggle shows that this will be a very different Screeching Weasel experience. The intro to "Hanging Around" resulted from the whole band jamming, something that had never previously been recorded as part of a Screeching Weasel song. Like some other songs on the record, it has a vaguely New Wave feel to it, though still firmly rooted in the punk Weasel had become known for. The guitar leads that also made up the band's trademark sound are once again to be found in most of the songs, but this time around they sometimes harmonize with either a lead played by the second guitar or bass. The band was never known for its musicianship, but Wiggle helped demonstrate that this was no simple three-chord band. The different styles experimented on through the album have caused some to call it disjointed and messy, a sentiment the band themselves may not completely disagree with. The strength of the songwriting, however, has held up very well over time and this album is still ranked among the band's classics.

The introspective lyric style Weasel employed on many of My Brain Hurts' best tracks returns for this album, starting immediately with "Hanging Around." This opening track finds Weasel questioning where his life is headed in relation to those around him and his new, school-aged fans being taught by his own ex-classmates. He dives even further into the isolation explored on the final track of the previous album, and finds no real answers to any of his questions, just a repeated chorus of "I don't know"s. Later in the album, "Second Floor East" and "Sad Little Girl" address the same isolation and loneliness. Both tell stories of a depressed girl, the former trying to lose herself in empty television and hoping for the best when it seems "like every day it slips a little more and fades"; the latter is in an even worse state as Weasel sings to her "you'll never change anything so start sharpening your claws." Weasel wrote years later that this was a very turbulent time in his own personal life, and his conflicting emotions show through very clearly in the album's bleakest lyrics.

In contrast to these dark themes are plenty of light-hearted and upbeat songs. "I'm Not in Love" proclaims its independence from the girls telling Weasel what to look like in commercials. "I Was a High School Psychopath," penned by Danny Vapid, is an anthem for all distressed high school punks and was inspired by Lookout! owner Lawrence Livermore's own failed attempt at blowing up his school. "Like a Parasite" is a short, fun ode to lecherousness. "Joanie Loves Johnny" is a hilarious alternate take on the characters of Happy Days, delivered in true Ramones/50s pop style. It also features some of Weasel and Vapid's finest vocal harmonizing, one of the band's greatest strengths and what helped set them apart from the legions of other pop-punk bands.

"Automatic Rejector" and "Jeannie's Got a Problem With Her Uterus" fit perfectly into the Weasel mode of songs that make a very distinct point through humor. "Rejector" attacks the arrogant, macho type going after girls. The song imagines him in a role reversal where the woman in question whips out a gun and tells him "why don't you suck on this." Weasel noted that the song was a play on "Automatic Lover" by the Vibrators. "Jeannie" is filled with silly rhymes and is delivered in a very playful tone, but is about a woman's repeated failed attempts to conceive a child. It's one of Weasel's finest anti-PC moments that still manages to touch on a real human concern.

Straddling the line between joke and serious heartbreak is "Crying In My Beer." Many of the lyrics are jokey, but the overall tone of the song is heartbreaking. It also contains some of Weasel's most vicious and hilarious lyrics, such as "if you were a TV show, baby, you would've been cancelled due to declining viewership, recycled plots and bad acting." Yet again, it's a wonderful example of Weasel's ability to convey honest emotion through humor, without ever sacrificing the meaning to silliness or drama.

"One Step Beyond" is a continuation of Weasel's attacks on the punk scene from the previous albums. He sees the "rebellious" punks swarming around him as "another gang of whitebread privileged kids" and makes it very clear that he wants nothing to do with them. As on the rest of the record, Weasel is brutal in his insults, never willing to play the part of musician who feels the need to pander to a crowd who choose to buy his band's records. "Slomotion" is an anomaly on the record, a fast, almost hardcore tune with lyrics that seem to have a slight political tone.

"Ain't Got No Sense" is a cover of the punk band Teenage Head. It fits perfectly within a Screeching Weasel record. Weasel later described TH as "the bridge between the Ramones and bands like The Flamin' Groovies and The Barracudas."

"It's All in My Head" ends the album proper on another serious note, with Weasel taking stock of several things in his everyday life and seeing them ultimately add up to nothing (much like in the opening track, "Hanging Around"). The difference is that, on the album's closer, he sees that these issues are mostly internal and he wishes for them to stay that way. It wraps the album up nicely thematically, though CD versions of Wiggle contained several bonus tracks after it.

The bonus tracks of the original, Lookout!, CD release are "Teenage Slumber Party", "Danny is a Wimp", and "Going Home." The first two are more on the silly side. "Teenage Slumber Party" actually dates from 1989, before the band broke up for the first time. "Danny" is a lyrically re-worked version of a song by The Queers. The lyrics to "Going Home" were written by Aaron Cometbus of Crimpshrine, and the music by Weasel. The song addresses the issue of women feeling threatened by men on the street whether or not they actually mean them any harm. It's an interesting nod to the increasingly hostile environment our society has created for women, and is much closer in theme and style to one of Cometbus's bands than Weasel. The recording was taken from a demo for the album recorded by Steve Albini.

The 2005 re-release of the album saw the inclusion of "Fuck the World", another song co-written by Joe of The Queers. SW had recorded another version of the song entitled "Amy Saw Me Looking At Her Boobs" during the Wiggle sessions. The Queers released their version of the song on their album Love Songs for the Retarded.