TAD: 8-WAY SANTA
ALBUM REVIEW: TAD's mid-career highlight gets retrospective consideration.
TAD: 8-Way Santa
Sub Pop
1991
1989-91 BN
While history’s revisionist headline suggests that Nirvana and Mudhoney were the only bands on Sub Pop between 1989-91 BN (Before Nevermind), the truth is very different. The Fluid, Afghan Whigs, Dwarves and Codeine had already release career-defining LPs while bands like Dinosaur Jr, Rapeman, Unsane, L7 and Rollins had let loose some of the best singles of the era.
The label was far more vibrant, incessant and varied than most documentarians would have us believe.
Another big secret that is hidden from us is that TAD were the best band on the label, by some significant margin. Bereft of the scrawny heroin-chic of Sub Pop’s high earners, they lacked the poster-child impact of their gawky brethren, which seemed to keep them, unjustifiably in Loser’s Corner.
But what the band lacked in an emaciated aesthetic, they more than made up for in the music - as weighty in the groove as they were on their hooves, TAD made an entrancing, tribal din that had more depth and consideration than their peers could only dream about making.
Less punk - where other bands were citing The Scientists, Sonic Youth, The Sonics and The Stooges as influences, TAD’s sound added more hardcore and rock to that mix; Black Flag, Black Sabbath, Pussy Galore and Butthole Surfers. It gave them a denser sound that relished being heavy as fuck.
Despite TAD himself being a softly spoken, articulate gentle giant, the label marketed them as red-necked lumberjacks, who would boil you up and suck your bones just as soon as look at you. The band obviously played along with it and created the myth, but it couldn’t have been further from the truth. Perhaps that myth was one reason the masses kept their distance.
They Came Down From The Hills
Thomas Andrew Doyle came to Seattle from Idaho. He was a drummer in the proto-grunge band H-Hour before starting his “solo” project under his own name. He was a classically trained musician; a jazz drummer and a tuba player. He was no slouch.
Washington native Kurt Danielson, who played bass and wrote with Tad, had an English degree and aspirations to use that in his career. He is an eloquent and erudite champion of poetry, art and literature; a far cry from the role of drunken oaf he played up to for Sub Pop.
He played with local heroes Bundle of Hiss before teaming up with TAD Himself.
The point is that their drunken, pot smoking and moon-shining image was very much at odds with the seriousness with which they took their music. Despite constantly revelling like perpetual Birthday Boys in the back of their van, deep down they knew better.
Of course, the image suited their lyrics and then, in turn, the lyrics underpinned the image - they sang of monsters, fictional and factual, from Wood Goblins to Ed Gein. They waxed lyrical about 4x4s, Trash Trucks, pigs and prostitutes. They leered lasciviously at trailer trash and penned odes to torture devices.
It was all pretend. Fictions for fun - but the abrasion of their themes, music and visage meant that they were a tougher sell than most. They were never going to be the sweethearts of the nation (though how much fun would that have been?).
I’m ruminating on this to try and get to the bottom of why they were never as huge as their less able cousins on the Sub Pop rosta. They deserved to be bigger.
Subterranian Pop Music
God’s Balls was the first album they released, kicking off with the anthem of anthems, Behemoth, and not letting up from the thundering darkness until the last cro-magnon threat of Ritual Device: “I’ve got a rock in my hand…”.
It’s wall-to-wall inbred grimness. To this day, nothing comes close to its hollow, death-stare. Its humour too well-hidden for most.
They followed God’s Balls with the Steve Albini engineered six track EP Salt Lick, which I still think is the best example of Albini’s studio skills. The density of the band’s sound and the harsh edge to it wasn’t like anything else on Sub Pop at all and it was captured perfectly by the late lamented noise rock hero.
The following year they recorded 8-Way Santa with Butch Vig.
8-Way Santa
The 13 tracks that are presented to us are a leap forward for the band. The lyrics are more weird and sinister tales of rural life a’la Big Black than the Nipple Belts of yore, and the musicality at play is at another level, with more dynamics.
The thunder is reigned in; the drums are still tom-driven, heavy and daunting - especially on Stumblin’ Man, Wired God and Jack Pepsi - but there’s also a “pop” levity at play on the album’s lighter - and, for me - most engaging moments - 3D Witch Hunt, Flame Tavern and Plague Years.
It feels like a revolution. Of course Jinx, the lead single, and follow up Jack Pepsi are two of the more iconic songs on the LP - and of TAD’s discography - but where the strength of God’s Balls and Salt Lick was in the obliterating, incessant, head-down weight of every song, here TAD show us that they’re capable of just as much strength across a broader songwriting palette.
It’s that variety that makes 8-Way Santa my favourite TAD album and the one least of its time. It still stands apart and hasn’t dated at all.
The album’s release wasn’t without controversy. The original artwork of the album, pictured at the start of this article, had been found at a flea-market, in a photo album amongst a box of crap that someone was selling as house clearance. The two stoned hippies it presented had in more recent years found god and turned their backs on their previously debauched lifestyle.
When they saw the artwork upon release, all hell broke loose. Sub Pop were sued for using it without permission, the artwork had to be changed and the controversy overshadowed the brilliance of the songs.
It cost a lot to rectify.
Post-Santa
Not long afterwards, TAD left Dub Pop and signed to Giant for the incredible and meaty Inhaler, then East West for their slightly lighter final studio album, Infrared Riding Hood.
TAD’s career never fulfilled its potential. They should have been as huge to the world as they were to me. They had the songs, but they seemed cursed with shitty luck and fickle labels, leaving them falling short of what should have been a towering career, striding beyond the sickening confines of the G- genre.
The centrepiece of that career was 8-Way Santa and it is as powerful now as it was upon release in 1991. My lovely transparent yellow European pressing from the time still plays perfectly and sounds amazing. All of their Sub Pop albums were remastered and reissued in 2018. Pick them all up as soon as you can.
TAD now runs his own recording studio in Seattle, Witch Ape. After TAD split, he formed Hog Molly for one album - Kung Fu Cocktail Grip. He also releases really heavy drone records as Brothers of the Sonic Cloth and classical music as Thomas Andrew Doyle.
Kurt Danielson continues to play music and absorb art. Check out Valis, Vaporland and Purple Strange.
Gary Thorstensen plays in Guest Directors.
Steve Wied went on to form the short-lived but wonderful Willard.
I really enjoy your writing 🖤