Monday 12 May 2008
ATP CONCERTS PRESENTS
MEAT PUPPETS
PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS HOWLIN RAIN
Rise to Your Knees is the first album of new material to bear the Meat Puppets name since 2000, and the first in a dozen years to reunite guitarist/singer/main songwriter Curt with his brother, bassist/co-founder Cris Kirkwood, who recently rejoined the band after a lengthy struggle with substance abuse.
The 15-song album--the resurgent Meat Puppets' first for the independent Anodyne label--boasts the same visionary fusion of complementary contrasts that originally endeared the band to a large and loyal audience in the 1980s, when they emerged from their hometown of Phoenix, Arizona to redefine the parameters of American indie rock.
Rise to Your Knees-- recorded in the band's adopted home base of Austin, Texas -- finds the Kirkwoods and new drummer Ted Marcus tapping into the same adventurous spirit that first put Meat Puppets on the map, recapturing the transcendent highs of their most
celebrated work. The resulting music adds an inspired new chapter to
the already massive legacy of a band whose body of music is an indispensable cornerstone of contemporary alternative rock.
For most of the 1980s, Curt, Cris and original drummer Derrick Bostrom turned out a remarkable run of independent releases, originally released on the SST label, including such acknowledged underground classics as Meat Puppets , Meat Puppets II , Up on the Sun
, Mirage , Huevos and Monsters . On those albums, the band applied
punk's loud, fast energy and a free-spirited sense of experimentalism to an ever-evolving mix of bluesy hard rock, high-lonesome twang and
homespun psychedelia. The threesome delivered its eclectic
iconoclasm with an increasingly sophisticated level of instrumental interplay, highlighted by Curt's inventive guitar runs and his and
Cris' rough-hewn vocal harmonies. The trio's dynamic interaction was
further reflected in their adrenaline-charged live shows, which were prone to induce delirious sonic highs.
Meat Puppets exercised a massive influence on more than one generation of like-minded indie combos--including Nirvana, whose fandom ran so deep that they invited them along as opening act on their In Utero tour, and invited the Kirkwoods to share the stage to perform three Meat Puppets numbers on Nirvana's historic 1994 MTV Unplugged special.
After nearly a decade of D.I.Y. success, Meat Puppets made a successful transition to major-label status in the first half of the '90s, signing with London Records and releasing Forbidden Places , Too High to Die and No Joke! , making unexpected inroads into the rock mainstream and even achieving a surprise hit with "Backwater."
The band went on hiatus for the remainder of the '90s, and Curt eventually reemerged leading a completely new, Austin-based
four-man Meat Puppets lineup for 2000's Golden Lies . He then formed
Eyes Adrift with Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and Sublime drummer Bud Gaugh; that outfit released one self-titled album in 2002.
Kirkwood then spent an extended stint touring as an acoustic solo act, releasing the stripped-down album Snow under his own name in 2005, before feeling the urge to reactivate Meat Puppets.
"I never broke the band up," asserts Kirkwood. "I never
said, 'There's no more Meat Puppets.' I drove thousands and
thousands of miles doing solo stuff, and I had a blast doing that, but
nobody was watching out for my ass except me. After four or five
years of that, I'd had enough and was ready to play electric. And
then some trusted friends in Phoenix said that Cris was rehabilitated, so I called him up and he seemed ready."
New drummer Ted Marcus arrived in an appropriately organic fashion, initially entering the band's orbit while working as soundman on a new Meat Puppets documentary, which had been shooting during the
early stages on Rise to Your Knees ' birth cycle. "After a few days
of tracking, everybody was like, 'Sonofabitch, this is amazing,'"
recalls Curt.
Having made self-produced low-budget indie records and expensive major-label albums with big-name producers, Kirkwood has a pretty clear idea of which approach works best for his band, whose music has always been rooted in spontaneity and inspiration.
"In the '80s, we used to just crap this stuff out," he notes.
"Those SST records cost, like, five grand apiece, if that much, and
those are the records that made people like us. Later, when we got
into a position to work in bigger studios with outside people, we'd wind up spending a whole bunch of money and having to satisfy the
people who gave us that money. We did that all through the '90s, and
I'm just not interested in doing that anymore.
"Now, if I can get away with it, I'll make a record as cheap as I can and put as little work as I can into it, which is what we did
with this one. I don't like putting a lot time into it. We cut a
track, and If we've played it halfway right, we're done with it."
With Rise to Your Knees already the subject of a rapturous groundswell among longtime fans, the reborn Meat Puppets' sense of
musical mission is as strong as ever. "I think this is the most
dynamic version of the band ever, and so far the love coming from the audience has been really, really great," he notes, adding, "We started
when Reagan was in, and I think it's a similar time now. It feels
medieval . It feels like the world is a fuckin' pile of shit that's
full of snakes and flies, and we're here to put some frosting on it."
Time: 7.30pm
Admission: £14.00 in advance
Tickets: See Tickets –
www.seetickets.com / 0115-912-9000 Stargreen –
www.stargreen.com / 0207-734-8932 WeGottickets.com
Buy tickets online
© 2004 SCALA 275 PENTONVILLE ROAD, LONDON N1 9NL — CALL US ON 020 7833 2022