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Nice, indeed. Thanks for posting, King T.
Was listening to "Disappear" when my 9-yr-old daughter came into the room. She took it in for a few minutes, said "If you don’t sweat it, you don’t get it," then walked out. Not sure what that meant, but it seemed to fit.
Will Meat Puppets gleam again? That song wouldn’t really fit with what our alternative station plays. Of course, they could have my car ip singled out where only songs about me and Jesus are played.
Rise to Your Knees
Meat Puppets
Anodyne RecordsWe’ve seen a rash of big names come out of retirement to take a swing at resurrecting the old glories. For most of the players in the reunion game — The Smashing Pumpkins, Dinosaur Jr., The Stooges, The New York Dolls — it’s been nothing but a matter of dusting off the old records and making a valiant attempt to return to the sound that made the legend.
For The Meat Puppets, things aren’t that simple. Unlike, say, the Pumpkins or Dino, the Arizona trio hasn’t enjoyed the sort of stability that makes firing up the reunion machine a simple clear-cut process. We knew exactly what to expect when Billy and Jimmy started jamming, and five albums set J., Murph and Lou on a pretty obvious course. The Puppets have none of that luxury of stability: Over its long career, the band bounced between hardcore, roots-punk, experimental attempts at synth-enabled rock, psychedelia and that brief stint as alt-radio mainstays.
That makes Rise to Your Knees a lot more intriguing concept than the notion of The Pixies or The Stooges play-acting their glory days to a new generation of fans. Rise to Your Knees isn’t entirely unpredictable as The Meat Puppets stick to the blend of country, psychedelic and American underground influences that, in varying amounts, served as the foundation for their sound. It’s just not an obvious attempt at formulaic nostalgia that seems to drive the reunion marketplace these days.
Rise to Your Knees revels in all things Meat Puppets, from the drugged-up hazy atmospheres and amp-shredding bursts of punky psychedelics to the shadow of twang that seemed to lurk just under the band’s surface for all its albums after II. Although the act sticks to the basics (Rise leans most toward Too High To Die’s pop simplicity), it’s a rare reunion that’s less about nostalgia and more about forging ahead. "Radio Moth" dumps shivering guitar synths into a sea of messy feedback and psychedelic guitar leads that sounds like Dinosaur Jr. was left in the desert to dry up and blow away. "Light the Fire" gets even more tripped out, with synths and an annoyingly Peter Frampton-like use of the wah pedal giving the punked-out track a truly lysergic feel. "Spit" delves into sugary power pop, "Tiny Kingdom" pulls out a banjo for some country pickin’ and "This Song" is an airy pop number.
The Meat Puppets had to claw their way through a back catalog that’s not made to be condensed and reformulated for an easy reunion. And if that makes Rise to Your Knees not as immediately recognizable or flashy as so many of the other back-from-retirement albums, it will at least leave you feeling that the Pups are back strictly to make music, not harp on long-lost glories.
– Matt Schild
Meat Puppets
Rise to Your Knees [Anodyne]
Writer: Rob O’Connor
Reviews, Issue 34, Published online on 06 Aug 2007We shouldn’t be having this conversation. Seriously. The idea that it’s 20 years later and Dinosaur Jr. has recorded a new album and the Kirkwood brothers have again revived the Meat Puppets—it’s enough to make you wonder that if you push modern medicine hard enough, maybe we can bring D. Boon back to life and put The Minutemen back together. This music, after all, was birthed in a punk-rock culture that gave little credence to the idea of longevity. What sparked tiny Lawndale, Calif., record label SST was an intense impulse to document what was happening now. And that “nowâ€
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