Despite having little commercial success and only existing for three years, Green River remains one of rock’s most important and influential bands. The grunge pioneers are best known for the bands they formed after Green River’s demise – such as Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, and Mother Love Bone – but the three albums released by Green River contain some of the best music in all of the grunge scene. Now more than 30 years later, Sub Pop Records is releasing Deluxe Editions of the band’s Dry as a Bone EP and the full-length Rehab Doll.
Jack Endino restored, remixed, and remastered the two albums based on the original studio recordings as well as other sessions. From an audio standpoint, the new Deluxe Editions sound better; they are louder and more powerful without sacrificing dynamic range. From a catalog standpoint, the new versions contain all of the previously released tracks, a few never-released songs, selections from Sub Pop’s Deep Six compilation album, as well as cuts from Endino’s 8-track Reciprocal Recordings. It’s enough extra material for the serious fan to buy the new editions even if they have the original albums.
The original Dry as a Bone album released in 1987 contained five songs, including the muddy blues romp of “Unwind” and the thrashing punk-influenced “PCC” and “Ozzie.” The Deluxe Edition includes those original five songs and 11 newly released tracks. “Bleeding Sheep” showcases Green River’s trademark melding of classic rock and punk, beginning with Stone Gossard and Bruce Fairweather’s intertwining guitar riffs before jumping into mosh pit-inducing aggressive power chords. “Bazaar” begins with singer Mark Arm sneering over a modest midtempo riff before the band kicks into a frenzied chorus. Likewise, “This Little Boy” is vintage Green River at its best – Arm’s trademark howl, Gossard and Fairweather’s competing guitar riffs, drummer Alex Vincent and bassist Jeff Ament’s frenetic rhythms. Even in adding 11 new songs to Dry as a Bone, nothing is superfluous except possibly alternative versions of “One More Stitch” and “Together We’ll Never,” both of which appear in different versions on Rehab Doll. These alternate mixes sound good, but aren’t significantly different from the originals.
The Deluxe Edition of Rehab Doll expands the original 8 songs from 1988 into an 18-track collection. Unlike the Deluxe Dry as a Bone, however, there isn’t much in terms of new songs. The last ten tracks on the album are taken from Endino’s 8-track Reciprocal Recordings. Endino and Arm contend that these rawer tracks, with murkier guitar and more droning vocals, sound closer to Green River’s live performances. Many fans will prefer these 8-track versions of the songs, but six of them are the same songs that appear earlier on the album. The other four include a rawer cut of “Hanging Tree,” a song newly released on the Dry as a Bone Deluxe Edition, “10000 Things,” which originally appeared on Deep Six, and two covers. Both covers are great additions to the Green River canon, including a riotous rendition of David Bowie’s “Queen Bitch” and the smarmy blues strut cover of Aerosmith’s “Somebody.”
Both Deluxe reissues have a lot to offer, with Dry as a Bone having a lot more in terms of new material while Rehab Doll focuses more on providing different audio presentations of existing songs. Though Green River disbanded before Seattle’s grunge movement hit the national scene, these two reissues show a band that blazed the trail for the grunge icons that would come later. The newly mixed and mastered songs better capture Green River’s energetic, style-melding sound that created a whole new genre while they previously unreleased tracks add more to a musical canon that was closed far too soon.
