Does Mudhoney Deserve Reconsideration?

The Onion AV Club says Mudhoney's 1991 album Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge is worth a re-listen. Say they:

[EGBDF] came out two months before Nirvana's Nevermind—and in a sense, it's the Bizarro Nevermind ... Every Good Boy in hindsight sounds like the grunge that should've been: ratty, humble, punky, weird, and catchy without resorting to grunting machismo.

Our resident grunge expert, Seattlest Clint, is in Chicago for "a wedding of people I've never met" (hey, you're the one who wanted a girlfriend, buddy). We rushed him a telegram and he wired back his thoughts.

Says Clint:

Weird, I almost bought Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge again the other night... There's a reason Mudhoney wasn't one of the Big Four or one of the other local bands in the grunge basket, and the AV folks are right about it--they didn't sound like the other bands that made it big. Before or after Every Good Boy. (Not coincidentally, [Mudhoney lead singer Mark] Arm apparently didn't like the "careerist" attitudes of former Green River bandmates Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament way back when, who then went on to be in one huge band.)

Mudhoney was rough and fuzzy, not terribly unlike early Malfunkshun, but Mark Arm's voice wasn't (and isn't) as audibly pleasing, reigned-in, or range-capable as Cornell's, Cobain's, Vedder's, or Andy Wood's. Not bad, just different.

And saying the "grunge that should've been" is this or that, is like saying "the Bible should have been shorter, more realistic (miracles? really?) and written by Jesus-haters." Okay, and if Mudhoney's stuff isn't usually a show of machismo, though maybe not "grunting," then what is?

They're right, though, when they say that today's garage-rock bands could use a shot of what made Mudhoney what they still are today--truly unpolished crunch.

PS: So far, Chicago (or Carol Stream, as it were), is booo-ring. And windy and wet.