Send "Meat Puppets " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Thegroovemusiclife |
 I welcomed the return of the Meat Puppets ever since Curt Kirkwood polled fans as to whether they wanted to see a reunion of the original lineup through his MySpace page. The first result of that question’s aftermath, 2007’s Rise To Your Knees, was the indie-rock equivalent of Star Trek: The Motion Picture: It was great to see/hear from some old friends again, even if the end results didn’t fully live up to the anticipation built up from years worth of passing time even before a return to action became reality.With that seemingly odd comparison having been made, it’s not a stretch to suggest that the follow-up, 2009’s Sewn Together (which made TGML’s Top 10 Album list that year) is the Meat Puppets’s Wrath of Khan. Fully recharged after the test run that was Rise To Your Knees, Curt and Cris Kirkwood and then-drummer Ted Marcus had delivered in Sewn Together a long-playing effort that was (and is) fully worthy of standing up with the best albums (II, Up On The Sun, Mirage, Huevos, Too High To Die) of their classic back catalog. Now, two years later, comes Lollipop; While they’ve had a major personnel change – Shandom Sahm, son of the late Sir Douglas Quintet/Texas Tornados leader Doug Sahm and also a former Meat Puppet back in the short-lived Golden Lies period, replaces Marcus behind the trap set – they not only haven’t lost a step, they’ve progressed nicely without losing an ounce of what makes the Meat Puppets who they quintessentially are, be it Curt Kirkwood’s lead lines or his and Cris’s brotherly harmonies. Much of the material could have fit nicely on Up On The Sun or Mirage, but there are also a few welcome twists and turns, like the reggae/ska rhythms that propel the verses “Shave It”, or the almost Coldplay-esque piano chords that open “Orange” only to get near-obliterated by “My Sharona” drums and some nasty fuzz bass from Cris Kirkwood. All of it works....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| Not everyone mellows as they age. Just most of us. Whatever the medium, but especially in music, the most outlandish stuff tends to come first. But this natural swing toward calm and control can be hell on musicians who made their names playing startling, violent, or unhinged music. That sort of ragged intensity is tough to maintain over the long haul; many bands don't even want to, whatever their fans might say. Despite a 30-year career and a deep discography, Meat Puppets are always going to be defined in the minds of many listeners by their first three albums, which caromed from thrashing hardcore to psychedelically tweaked country-punk to beautiful rustic psychedelia. With records that singular, it's unsurprising that people might want more like them, even if Meat Puppets stopped sounding like that unstable-but-melodic band long before they first broke up. Three albums into their career reboot and it's pretty clear that the Puppets have no desire to return to that sun-zonked creative zone, or even to the more traditional (if still wild) boogie rock they made in their second phase. Like all the music the Puppets have made this decade, Lollipop lacks even the occasional kick of their 1990s major label albums. At this point you can take these newest Puppets albums for what they are, or ignore them. The band had already pointed to the more laid-back direction their career might take as early as album number three, Up on the Sun, a collection of super-loose melodic jams that was both amazingly skillful (check out that guitar) and woozily unconventional (check out those song structures). That looseness and wooziness is nowhere to be heard on Lollipop. As with its two 21st-century predecessors, the album's full of highly polished songs, the sort of gentle country rock and folk-y ballads that aging alt-rockers have always turned to. Tempos stay steady and mellow. Curt Kirkwood is still a fleet and inventive guitarist, but he's far less likely to spiral off into reverb-soaked insanity, though there are hints of the old madness in the solos he briefly unleashes on "Baby Don't" and "Hour of the Idiot". And for a band that made a virtue of vocals that croaked and cracked and refused to stay in tune, the singing here is once again smoother than anyone could have expected back in 1984....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| It's always a little disconcerting when you are able to turn a band into an SAT analogy question without having to sit down and listen to their record first. Take for instance Jamaica, a retro-obsessed Parisian duo with a thing for unabashed pop anthems, who recently broadened their commercial appeal Stateside by having their single featured in a car ad. So yes, it's safe to say that Jamaica have a great deal in common with Phoenix, and their debut No Problem does its best to try and capture the star-making magic that those other French pop luminaries uncovered with their last LP, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. The differences between the two records, however, is more important: No Problem is a debut in the most uninformed sense of the word, showcasing mostly bland, same-sounding songs in serious need of some personality or spark. The duo (Antoine Hilaire and Florent Lyonnet) enlisted Justice's Xavier de Rosnay and Daft Punk's sound engineer Peter Franco to handle production duties, and on the single "I Think I Like U 2", it seems like the big-name help came in handy. It's a song that's a little cheesy and way too excited, but in the way that really sharp, fun pop music can be without feeling too patronizing or dopey. As familiar sounding as it is (even the lyrics-- "She was never pretty, she was only young"-- feel like stolen goods), it works, plain and simple. If we give Jamaica the benefit of the doubt, everything else on No Problem is then, in some way, cut from the cloth of "I Think I Like U 2", and it's a sensible, if not unambitious, plan of attack. But not a single one of the resulting songs captures the same kind of ebullience and fluidity, instead opting for choppier structures that, in most cases, seem bent on keeping people off the discotheque floor....full text |
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