Mission Of Burma: The Reunion That Works Friday July 21, 2006 @ 06:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff 
Mission Of Burma We've seen a lot of rockers pick up the pieces of their former careers and take their acts back on the road for a new and improved buck over the last three years, but none have done it so completely sincerely and fruitfully as
Mission Of Burma.
Following a break of nearly 20 years, the trio reunited in 2002 and, two years later, compiled one of 2004's best record's, OnOffOn. This year, they're not just staying relevant, they're kicking ass and taking names with their latest album, The Obliterati. The secret to their success? Apparently they just don't give a fuck anymore.
"When The Obliterati was done, we'd worked really hard on it, and I was tired of Mission Of Burma completely 'cause I spent so much time in the studio," co-frontman
Roger Miller recalls.
"And I thought, 'You know, who cares? People probably aren't going to care about this record, and if they do, great. And if they don't, it just doesn't matter to me.' I mean, we made a really good record. That's my only concern.
"But it wasn't like, 'Is it going to hold up to the other stuff?' I believe we all thought it would hold up just fine. Whether people would react to it, that's beyond our control."
It may be out of their control, but response to The Obliterati has been almost as overwhelmingly positive as the raves for OnOffOn.
The band made a decision to produce the record themselves and, with the pressure to succeed remarkably lower this time around, the band were able to relax a bit and just make the album that they wanted to make.
"I think before we were like, 'OK, how do you write a Mission Of Burma song? Oh, I remember!'" says Miller with a laugh. "I think this record was a little more effortless.
"There was no stress involved. There was no 'Is this going to taint our legacy?' There was some of that in OnOffOn. For OnOffOn, it was our first record and we were perhaps a little nervous. Friends were always in the studio cheering us on and encouraging us and it turned out pretty good. This one, hardly anybody came by. It was just us working away at it."
One place where The Obliterati differs from Burma's other records is that this one has an unrelenting pummelling effect. If there's anything that Miller thinks they've gotten good at since reuniting, it's exactly that.
"It's brutal in some respects. In the first round of the band, in the early '80s, people in the Boston area would see us and say, 'I just don't get it.' And then after a third time, this blurry thing would come into focus and they'd go, 'I get it now.' And then they would become maniacal fans.
"I think we play a tiny bit slower now than we did 20 years ago, just a tiny bit. You know, I've listened to some of the stuff from '82 and we're playing so fast that some of these complicated changes we had in our songs were just blurred. Now you listen to it and it's like there's a punctuation mark after a new riff. You can kind of feel it more. I think because we play about two per cent slower, we're about 50 per cent easier to understand. [laughs]"
Burma will kick off a North American tour, which includes a high profile slot at the Pitchfork Music Festival, at Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern on July 26. Burma fans
Republic Of Safety are opening.
Linear Mode
