Silkworm: Even A Blind Chicken Finds A Kernel Of Corn Now And Then

Silkworm's music has never been especially accessible, trafficking in seething drama, irregular rhythms, spastic noise attacks, and multiple vocalists who alternately mumble, sing, and shout. The Seattle (by way of Montana) band has sounded monumentally powerful (1994's In The West), directionless and a bit overrated (1996's Firewater), and somewhere in between (Libertine, quietly released in late 1994). The unpredictability hasn't been without cause: Silkworm has survived the departure of immensely talented singer/guitarist Joel R.L. Phelps—he left for a fruitful, if similarly obscure, solo career—as well as a van crash and splits from several record labels. Now, as it prepares to record another record for yet another label, Silkworm releases the 26-song, two-disc, two-hour Even A Blind Chicken Finds A Kernel Of Corn Now And Then, a 1990&shyp;1994 retrospective as lengthy and convoluted as its title. Fortunately for Silkworm fans, at whom the collection is clearly geared, there's some terrific stuff here. Containing almost all of Silkworm's self-released, hard-to-find 1992 album L'Ajre ("Pearl Harbor" is here in a different form), as well as all five songs on its 1993 …His Absence Is A Blessing EP and countless singles and oddities, the collection features marvels from throughout the band's most creatively fertile period. "Three Beatings," the straightforward "Violet," the holiday epic "In The Bleak Midwinter," and the impossibly forceful "Our Secret" are simply awesome—and "Inside Outside," the band's first recording, is a riveting curio—but there's other ambitious material scattered throughout these sprawling archives. Even A Blind Chicken is for fans only, of course, but moneyed outsiders could do a lot worse than to give it a try.