Meat Puppets II

Cosmic cowpunk that sounds like a feral coyote stranded in a desert slowly losing its mind with moments of lucidity in between. It largely gets shadowed by Kurt Cobain covering their songs, but unlike some other bands Nirvana covered, this album actually can stand on its own.

Meat Puppets II is a haphazard collection of songs that sacrifices musicality for camaraderie, and it succeeds. It's very sloppy with a psychedelic reverb to it with the classic punk attitude intertwined between. Curt Kirkwood's guitars and lazy vocal delivery created a blueprint alongside R.E.M and Dinosaur Jr. for indie band across America and beyond.

The best songs are the ones covered by Nirvana at their unplugged session. That can be interpreted either as The Meat Puppets being good, or Kurt having great tastes. You be the judge.

Amateurish, avant-garde punk that is surprisingly hard to rate as it is It’s easy to listen to. The Country-infused punk makes for an interesting combination.

I’m not sure what’s more surprising: how much I enjoyed this, or how an album I’d never heard of has (rightly) found its way onto so many best-of-the-80s lists. Some tracks tread perilously close to sounding like Benny Hill backing music, but overall, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable listen.

I was unsure this album would measure up as I wasn't feeling the opening track, but it's impressive that my mind was almost changed by the end. While not as astonishing as the string of 4 star and above albums I've been getting lately, this was still an interesting journey into the minds of the "Meat Puppets" and their fun brand of chaos! Never heard of the cowpunk genre before this and it sounded exactly like how I thought it would (complimentary), though I'm not sure it's my cup of tea.

Meh, at least it was short.

First listen. What an awful vocalist, I love it. I thought I’d hate this after the opening track. Then, the rest of the album surprised me.

I had a cd of No Joke! in high school so I was expecting this album to sound like that. Same band, completely different sound. No Joke! is pretty straight forward alt rock. This was alt country before alt country, proto-alt country? Or is that too much. Either way this album was way ahead of its time and a joy to listen to.

If it weren’t for Cobain, most of us would never have heard their unique brand of PNW folk punk which would have been a shame. Only a handful pf tracks are really great (mostly the ones Nirvana covered) but they’re way worth the listen.

loved it, reminded me of like ween, Connor oberst, and Liz phair at points.

Besides Lost and What To Do, this album was terrible.

I forgot what I was going to say.

Love this.

Favourite songs: Plateau, Aurora Borealis, New Gods

Gods i love this cover. While i am not one to like abstract, this just does something to my drunk brain.

I didn't get the meat puppets when I was younger but as a slightly older person now, they make complete sense to me. This album reminds me of The Gun Club. Both were sort of doing a cowpunk thing which has grown on me with time.

Jamais écouté avant.

Voilà un album qui sur le papier n'a rien pour plaire : une voix que l'on qualifiera généreusement d'hasardeuse, un mélange de genre qui confine à la mixture indigeste (on y trouve du noise, du punk hardcore, de la country, de généreuses doses de psychédélisme et une bonne louchée de rock'n'roll pour lier le tout), une production brute de décoffrage, une pochette d'une laideur ostentatoire... Et pourtant, il y a dans Meat Puppets II quelque chose d'un geste punk, d'un nihilisme esthétique poussé à l'extrême qui capte notre attention pour ne la relâcher qu'une fois l'album achevé. Comme si l'on assistait, dans les intervalles de ce joyeux bordel, quelque part entre ses mélodies minimalistes et ses instrumentaux tranquillement virtuoses, à la naissance d'un son nouveau, celui-là même qu'on appellera grunge quelques années plus tard. Une incroyable découverte, étrange sans doute, mais assez géniale, ça c'est sûr !

Top : Plateau
Flop : The Whistling Song

Another band I hadn’t spent much time with and am blown away by. I played this album back twice. There’s some low moments, but there’s a lot of groove and fun being had on this album. I listened to their album after this, Up on the Sun, and that was even better. A lot less punk and more infectious grooves and melodies. I don’t understand how that isn’t on this list. This album feels like the jumping off point for figuring out things to deliver a solid next album.

The best track is an instrumental, which says a lot about the vocals on this. Interesting ideas in some of the songs could have really used another member with vision to hone these in or at least a producer that was... nevermind, self produced. Explains quite a bit about this.

This is exactly the kind of mid tier crap music critics will try to convince you is whatever buzzwords might convince some reader they should try harder to "get it".

I dont care that Kurt Cobain loved them so Im not going to pretend its better than what it is.

An interesting take on country-punk to begin with, but this quickly lost momentum and began to grate in a vocal sense. Not for me.

Didn't see the point of this, to be honest.

Pretty good, though it mostly is nice to hear the original versions of the tracks Nirvana plays on their MTV Unplugged album. Not bad, just not sure if it's "essential". 3/5

3.32