Review Summary: http://oi50.tinypic.com/216d7n.jpg
10 of 11 thought this review was well writtenForget
Let it Be,
Doolittle and the other usual suspects that litter the top spots of the average list purporting to represent the cream of the 1980s US indie rock underground - Arizona’s Meat Puppets released at least two albums in the same time period that wipe the floor with most of them. Instead of just focusing on the decade and punk background from which they came, there’s even a case to be made for them as one of the great US rock bands, period. It was from those punk roots that the band’s defining works
Meat Puppets II and
Up on the Sun were born - having already made their mark with the acid fried hardcore of their first EP and SST debut, their creative progression in the next few years was motivated in large part by a desire to branch out and further alienate the kind of audiences who reacted to their long hair and covers of Doc Watson and Creedence Clearwater Revival songs with disgust and hurled beer cans. Led by one of the more talented songwriters/guitarists of the era in Curt Kirkwood (assisted by bro Cris on bass and drummer Derrick Bostrom), the result was a unique album boasting a hybrid of sounds and influences, from psychedelia tinged hardcore to the smoldering guitar jams of
Zuma era Neil Young and straight up country of Bob Nolan, but the end result still sounds like little else.
Evoking images of the desert around the band’s hometown Phoenix, the instrumental “Aurora Borealis”, “We’re Here” and “Plateau”s shimmering outro are representative of the album as a whole; timeless passages of music imbued with a sense of fragility by the bands lackadaisical playing and Kirkwood’s languid, wavering vocals, which may initially take some getting used to for new listeners or those with
dicks in their ears. Surreal yet often poignant, his lyrics are one of the keys to the enduring charm of
II’s hazy, spaced out world and touch on subjects ranging from folklore and junk culture to youthful uncertainty, as described by the breezeway rambling narrator in “Lost”. Their next record
Up on the Sun was a similarly great leap into new territory but the Meat Puppets never sounded quite like this again.
