Led by the impossibly tall and invariably naked Gibby Haynes, the Butthole Surfers were a maverick troupe of acid freaks, deadbeats and outcasts whose early work gleefully twisted punk and psychedelia into grotesque, distended shapes. On stage, terrifyingly, they were aided by graphic footage of sex change operations, and worse.
Matador Records’ Buttholes reissue programme kicks off with the band’s debut full-length album Psychic, Powerless, Another Man’s Sac (8/10), whose highlights include Mexican Caravan, an increasingly frazzled space rocker that tells of a search for heroin; the delightfully disgusting, phlegm-powered Lady Sniff; and the hallucinatory Cowboy Bob, an ever-spiralling, post-apocalyptic acid-fantasy in which Haynes jabbers in the manner of a someone who’s undergone a partial lobotomy.
