The Meat Puppets: Rise to Your Knees

Let’s get this out of the way first: the first new Meat Puppets record in seven years (twelve if you’re really counting) isn’t a glorious return to form. Luckily, it’s an exceedingly good one.

Even better, unlike so many of their reformed peers, Rise To Your Knees proudly exists here and now and not in ‘87. For the Kirkwood brothers, whose often brilliant career was never exactly one of consistency, a look backwards could have meant some dreadful retreads.

Thankfully, the Pups are behaving themselves for the most part, and there is no empty nostalgia here. There’s plenty of new territory, from mandolin-led folk (”Tiny Kingdom”) to sea shanty (”The Ship”), and it’s all filtered through their signature fried Americana.

Ever the melodic innovator, Curt Kirkwood has no interest in being anybody but Curt Kirkwood circa 2007. The distinctive, blissed-out, occasionally jagged guitar is intact, conjuring up visions of some Southwestern lysergic sunset as it always has. What makes Rise To Your Knees a success is how unassuming, how natural, and how downright nice this all sounds.

At almost 67:36, this does run a little long, but the inevitable low points are few and at worst merely boring, never embarrassing (even the hookless electro-thump clinker “Light The Fire” has guitar pyrotechnics on its side).

- Mike McGovern
The Meat Puppets (Anodyne)