Meat Puppets: the first eight years
1What's your favorite Meat Puppets album from their SST catalog, and why?
Re: Meat Puppets: the first eight years
2The debut. B/c it rocks hard in this sort of rabid, slobbering, loose fashion. Guitar playing is terrific. Vocals sound like your drunk dad making fun of hardcore.
II is ok, but after that, I'm way less interested. Aside from a few remnants of it on the second album, the Meat Puppets unfortunately mostly abandoned the peyote-punk approach of the debut. That first EP is also really cool, though.
II is ok, but after that, I'm way less interested. Aside from a few remnants of it on the second album, the Meat Puppets unfortunately mostly abandoned the peyote-punk approach of the debut. That first EP is also really cool, though.
Re: Meat Puppets: the first eight years
3The best is II, but my favourite is Mirage. They take the amazing achievements from Up on the Sun, remove all the traces of punk and push the psychedelic influences up the max, all while maintaining that sterile, shimmering sound that lets the interweaving guitar lines glisten. It's full on Deadhead style hippy nonsense, but the musicianship is stellar and the results are often quite beautiful, IMO.
Re: Meat Puppets: the first eight years
4I agree that II is their best, but also enjoy Mirage a lot. Those guys were virtuosic players. Monsters is a funny record; they wanted to compete with hair metal bands.
I'd rather be throwing darts.
Re: Meat Puppets: the first eight years
5I like the songs and atmosphere of Up on the Sun the best but some of those direct guitar sounds are rough.
Re: Meat Puppets: the first eight years
6A Hundred Miles might be their best song.
I'd rather be throwing darts.
Re: Meat Puppets: the first eight years
7Maybe an unpopular opinion but I think the caterwaul-y vocals on II ruin a lot of good songs.
Re: Meat Puppets: the first eight years
8There's *something* to be argued about the vocal performance on II being a shambolic evolution of the primal ravings of the debut... like the cro-magnons finally crawling out of the mud and up the mountain to see the face of God in the starry sky; shaken by celestial wonder and bliss...penningtron wrote: Wed Sep 03, 2025 11:16 am Maybe an unpopular opinion but I think the caterwaul-y vocals on II ruin a lot of good songs.
Though I do get that they are polarising.
Re: Meat Puppets: the first eight years
9Up on the sun is one of my favorite rock albums of the 80s and the smooth guitar tones actually fit thei riffs and is offset by quirky song-structures and the vocals. Also, Chris Krikwoods bass is something else on this album-VAST improvement over the earlier stuff where he often sounded barely competent at best.
Otherwise:
Debut is cool but the In a car EP manages to get the same point across both better and more succintly.
II-great album of course but a bit too much country for me to fully *love* it. Vocals sound cool to me, doesn't bother me one bit, I think they sounded worse when Curt was trying to sing "properly"; on Up on the sun, he went for a stoned bro thing which worked too but afterwards, vocals don't add much.
Mirage-When I first picked up this album (used), I thought it sounded like Dire Straits and was so disgusted I sold it the next day. I've grown to appreciate it later though but all quirks are gone, it's mainly Curts guitarplaying and the songwriting (which is hit-and-miss but some songs are great) that carries it. Drum sound is repulsive
Huevos-Better sound/vibe but while the ZZ top tributes that takes up too much of the album are well-done, it's too pastiche and genre-excercise to amount to much. I like the other cuts though, kind of same style as Mirage on those but more sympathetic production/vocals/feel.
Monster-I tend to hear this as a mix of Huevos and Mirage with some 80s "metal" thrown in the mix on a few songs. Cool record overall but once again, the production does them a disservice and many of the hooks are almost self-consciously lazy and uninspired, just repeating the title over and over...
Otherwise:
Debut is cool but the In a car EP manages to get the same point across both better and more succintly.
II-great album of course but a bit too much country for me to fully *love* it. Vocals sound cool to me, doesn't bother me one bit, I think they sounded worse when Curt was trying to sing "properly"; on Up on the sun, he went for a stoned bro thing which worked too but afterwards, vocals don't add much.
Mirage-When I first picked up this album (used), I thought it sounded like Dire Straits and was so disgusted I sold it the next day. I've grown to appreciate it later though but all quirks are gone, it's mainly Curts guitarplaying and the songwriting (which is hit-and-miss but some songs are great) that carries it. Drum sound is repulsive
Huevos-Better sound/vibe but while the ZZ top tributes that takes up too much of the album are well-done, it's too pastiche and genre-excercise to amount to much. I like the other cuts though, kind of same style as Mirage on those but more sympathetic production/vocals/feel.
Monster-I tend to hear this as a mix of Huevos and Mirage with some 80s "metal" thrown in the mix on a few songs. Cool record overall but once again, the production does them a disservice and many of the hooks are almost self-consciously lazy and uninspired, just repeating the title over and over...
Re: Meat Puppets: the first eight years
10Man, I was one of the millions of kids sent to Meat Puppets II by Kurt Cobain and was totally unprepared to take it in at 12 or 13 years old. I remember rabidly reading any Nirvana related press and a thing Courtney said about Kurt playing this record for her and her telling him how awful it was. Then she heard him learning the songs and getting swept up in his takes on the material. He heard the genius that she couldn't (and I couldn't).penningtron wrote: Wed Sep 03, 2025 11:16 am Maybe an unpopular opinion but I think the caterwaul-y vocals on II ruin a lot of good songs.
I've heard Jeff Tweedy talking about how important this record was for the guys in Uncle Tupelo too.
I guess it's a writing vs performance thing. The internet fed me a convincing, late 60s soul version of Hanson's "mmmbop" and I can't deny how good it sounded. But I digress. I find Up On the Sun a much more enjoyable listen.