The 1985 Listening Post - Meat Puppets - Up On the Sun

Meat Puppets - Up On the Sun

#79

March 21 1985

Meat Puppets

Up on the Sun

Genre: Alternative

4.5 out of 5

Highlights:

Up on the Sun

Maiden’s Milk

Swimming Ground

Too Real

Two Rivers

Screw Nirvana. Kurt Cobain so obviously worshipped at the altar of Chris Kirkwood. 

This album is loose and fun, with the wind of psychedelia at their backs and post-punk in their rearview this is a gem. 

The band’s tightness not only supersedes the weak, almost incompetent singing but is enhanced by it. AND because they are so tight and assured I find the warbling endearing. Like more a musical instrument than a vocal.

Two Rivers is so hypnotically beautiful in a way that I didn’t expect that I had to just listen to it again to be sure I loved it as much as I did. 

This is not post-punk. This is alt-country. At least, as close as you can get to that. How this became the influence for grunge is beyond me…

I think I like this even more than Meat Puppets II

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/up-on-the-sun/444775710

The 1984 Listening Post - Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II

Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II

#76

April 1984

Meat Puppets

Meat Puppets II

4.25 out of 5

Highlights:

Split Myself in Two

Climbing

Lake of Fire

Meat Puppets get it. Its about songs. It doesn’t matter if you sound like you’re falling apart. It doesn’t matter how hard you thrash or if you can even keep time. Rock is about falling apart. Rock is about organized disorganization. It’s about disorganized organization. It’s about so much that is out of control. Controlled chaos? Sure. Am I saying the same thing over and over but in slightly different ways? Yes. Because that, too, is rock. 

So much of alternative music can be found in the second two Meat Puppets records (I was not a fan of their first go round). They can be intrusively ugly (“We’re Here”) and then drunkenly attempt beauty (“Climbing”) and while they fail they succeed in the rawness of that failure. On the other hand, Meat Puppets are probably more responsible for Nirvana than any other band.

https://open.spotify.com/album/5JFZRr2UTCkcuT5LSXSbJ9?si=1hu9GyazRb65-QstuZXyGQ