It was early on in my personal punk experience that the Meat Puppets became part of that formative musical cream. Their name, slightly risqué and unforgettable, stood out as the most colorful from black-and-white sidebar listings from the local weekly. It wasn’t long before I was inundated with their distinctly funky crunch of country and punk, albums like Up On The Sun and II legitimizing the obscure obsession. While other bands from the SST roster managed to crest more profoundly (the quasars, like The Minutemen and Descendents) or crash more in a more beautiful, operatic mess (Black Flag), few have endured and lived to tell the tale.
Fast-forward more than twenty-five years from debut, and in true expression of digital populism, the band reforms from a long hiatus on the strength (arguably) of a MySpace bulletin.. Whatever is the impetus, the trio from Tempe (Kirkwood brothers both, backed up by Ted Marcus instead of Derrick Bostrom on drums) issued their twelfth record, Sewn Together (their second since reformation). While not an about-face departure from their rough punk roots, the album is more ZZ Top than Mia Zapata. The band is lightheaded at times featuring downright dreamy fits (“Sapphire” and “Smoke”), as well as swimming describing lovelorn, heathen cosmology (“I’m Not You” and “Go To Your Head”). If it seems that Sewn Together isn’t exactly a facsimile resurrection of one of the American underground’s great progenitors, then that impression is fitting: aside from a few jangle-fused (“Rotten Shame”) and mud-packed (“S.K.A”) songs, the record is decidedly polished, stoned, and better described as tribute to greasy Southern boogie rock.
The second to the last song on Meat Puppets’ II is another of the freakish and indecipherable that defined the album: its name is “I’m A Mindless Idiot.” While that may have been true (the Babylon about their excess is rich) the band, legendary for its drug use and self-destruction, found a way to add a phoenix chapter to its story. Perhaps they were mindless idiots then; now however, wisely resolute.
|