Week 4: Meat Puppets II

11. MEAT PUPPETS - Meat Puppets II
SST, 1984

The Meat Puppets are from Arizona, and they sound like it. I don't know if you've ever spent any time there, but the desert can be one oppressive summabitch. The overwhelming lack of those things which give life - trees, plants, water - could make even the sanest man lose his marbles on the wrong kind of day. The Puppets, on II, sound a whole lot like that man, and perhaps they were: given the addiction issues and other personal struggles that followed their rise to success, a reasonable observer might surmise that these types of things are very easily precipitated by that angry, red Arizona desert and its harsh, unpitying dry heat (I've got no hard evidence to support this possibly absurd statement, but let's just go with it for these purposes). Meat Puppets II found the band experimenting for the first time with swirling psychedelia, as well as noodly, Western-style instrumentation; alongside their more familiar SST hardcore roots, it makes for one hell of a weirdo record, albeit a damn fine one for sure. Much has been made of this album's influence on alt-rock bands to come - Kurt Cobain famously invited Curt and Cris Kirkwood to perform alongside Nirvana for their 1994 Unplugged concert (the three songs played there are all featured on II). Likewise, the Puppets would go on to further explore the expansive, psychedelic side of their music, but what makes II such a bona fide classic is that it seems so conflicted as to what it is: too punk to be country, too twangy to be punk - too goddamn good, truly, to be forgotten.