The Minutemen had already come up with a sound as distinctive as anything to come out of the American punk underground -- lean, fractured, and urgent -- with their debut album, 1981's
The Punch Line. But on their second (relatively) long-player,
What Makes a Man Start Fires?, the three dudes from Pedro opted to slow down their tempos a bit, and something remarkable happened --
the Minutemen revealed that they were writing really great songs, with a remarkable degree of stylistic diversity. If you were looking for three-chord blast,
the Minutemen were still capable of delivering, as the opening cut proved (the hyper-anthemic
"Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs"), but there was just as much churning, minimalistic funk as punk bile in their sound (bassist
Mike Watt and drummer
George Hurley were already a strikingly powerful and imaginative rhythm section), and
D. Boon's guitar solos were the work of a man who could say a lot musically in a very short space of time. Leaping with confidence and agility between loud rants (
"Split Red"), troubled meditations (
"Plight"), and plainspoken addresses on the state of the world (
"Mutiny in Jonestown"),
the Minutemen were showing a maturity of vision that far outstripped most of their contemporaries and a musical intelligence that blended a startling sophistication with a street kid's passion for fast-and-loud. It says a lot about
the Minutemen's growth that
The Punch Line sounded like a great punk album, but a year later
What Makes a Man Start Fires? sounded like a great album -- period. ~ Mark Deming
