meat puppets ii

Tempted to throw a vote to the lovely and underappreciated "I'm a Mindless Idiot," or maybe the exquisite blurriness of "We're Here," but the end of "Plateau"...

"Lost."

http://www.davidpietrusza.com/web-the-nation-needs-nixon.gif

tough call, I often played The Whistling Song by itself and that would be my first thought...haven't played this in a while, I often said this was my favorite album of the 80s

I learned it from a cassette that a friend made of this for me. He flipped the two sides when he taped it.

Years later I was surprised to learn that the album is always listed as kicking off with 'split' and ending with 'whistling' --- because doesn't it make a lot more sense to kick off with climbing out of bed and end with the serenity of 'we're here' ?

I've been obsessed w We're Here and New Gods lately but usually for me the correct answer is Aurora Borealis

Lost. But it's amazing how terrible the mix is on that song. The bass is absurdly huge and bouncy and the guitar is at times nearly inaudible.

Man so tough.

Lost. But really this album is perfection.

Are the bonus tracks any good? I have an old SST CD of this.

Worth a listen, not sure I'd include them as poll options though.

Like teenagers a lot..

lake of fire.

Aurora Borealis

Up On The Sun will always be my favorite puppets and my favorite of all sst albums but obv II is also godly

"HibernusMortis1
2 years ago

I get tired of living Obama's mess <--------updated lyric line. :) Yet another awesome Meat Puppet tune!"

My vote for best video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4RXPjGus2A

Up On The Sun will always be my favorite puppets

Same here but I look forward to listening to this album when I get home tonight, the only song I can remember is the one with whistling on it.

The run of Plateau/Aurora Borealis/We're Here is so great, can't think of any other music that quite nails that particular trippy desert vibe so well.

it's such a perfect desert album

oft cited on BBC's Desert Discs feature

would relisten

some DJ on WFMU used Whistling Song as their intro for eons, so it's probly my most heard by far.

Time, time, it's so sublime
Well they say it's nonexistent but it's playing with my mind

Ha! I'm listening to Mirage at this very moment! I hate to say it but I'm still not that big a fan of II, in fact I've come to the conclusion I'm not really a Meat Puppets fan so much as an Up on the Sun fan.

Voted "Climbing" (was just listening to this and this is the one I return to the most).

Love Up on the Sun as well. I think those are the only two recs by them I've heard.

Voting Plateau in this poll, really admire their restraint in keeping the ending so short, I'd have been like, "Let's keep this going for 5 minutes!"

... Aurora Borealis follows it so seamlessly too.

Yeah, they sorta keep going via "Aurora.."

I love that saturated guitar sound in some of these tracks. Neil Young-esque maybe, dunno.

everything on this record is nigh-perfect

My challopsy opinion has always been that Up On the Sun is a better album while Meat Puppets II has better songs on it.

I was entranced by "We're Here" upon the first listen in 1984, so that.

The run of Plateau/Aurora Borealis/We're Here is so great, can't think of any other music that quite nails that particular trippy desert vibe so well.

― Gavin, Leeds, Wednesday, April 1, 2015 11:03 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This post is particularly otm. Also great how Climbing is such an amiable slap back into reality.

Tbh II is kind of lightweight around the edges but as an album I think it's more solid than Up On the Sun, and I really wish there were more hallucinatory punk records

brb about to register eleven sock accounts and vote for all the other tracks

because honestly

the only bad thing about this thread is it reminds me that i gave an ex-gf my original vinyl copy of this ten years ago as a gift (along with a bunch of other records) because i had the ryko cd reissue and thought i wouldn't miss its absence, and i know for a fact she isn't listening to it right now, and i worry that its gone in a bin, and i want it back, i want it back i tell you

does anybody itt ride for the debut? it seems pleasant enough (just heard it for the first time a few months ago) but hasn't really clicked with me yet... maybe over the summer

The way Aurora Borealis picks up from where Plateau left off really left a big impression the first time, I was nonplussed at the seemingly DGAF sequencing, the exact same Crazy Horse drumbeat and tempo just starting again, there's a few great moments like that.

The run of three tracks that Gavin mentions are deadly, that rainy guitar sound at the beginning of We're Here - and when it creeps back in, all quiet, for the second verse - slays me.

As much as I like Up On The Sun, it falls off greatly after Hot Pink imho. II is top to bottom greatness.

I like the first one, apart from the singing, it's kinda like the Minutemen in places. If the singing had been different it would have been really great tho'.

this one is kinda like the minutemen in places

One of my favorite albums. Plateau's paranoid verses and gorgeous coda is the winning combination for me.

Lol I actually think Hot Pink is where Sun starts picking up tbh

Haven't heard the first one yet but I stan p hard for Out My Way

The opening to Split Myself in Two is another great desert-rock moment: Curt's guitar leaving tracers before the manic noiserock clunk engine kicks in high gear. There really is something unreal and mindblowing about how Spot managed to stumble upon just the right amount of lo-fi-ness to make the guitars sound so thoroughly iridescent.

clunk = cowpunk, lol autocorrect

Love the singing in the way Kirkwood lets his voice go.

Out My Way is amazing, bostrom dumps all over it on his blog but that ep is pure guitar oxygen imo

Yeah even with all the zillionth-timed covers padding out the end, the OMW CD reissue still does a good job of becoming the third album in of a classic album trilogy

Aw man. This album. Think NME put me onto it
I used to stare at the rear cover photo from my bedroom in Hull, England and imagine how blissful it must be to Iive in the desert and play guitar. (not really linking Phoenix with 3M pop,n)
I was fascinated with this band and their country (music).
It was way more 'punk' than the conformist UK shit that was around at the time.
New Gods or Plateau for me. JoeStork ^ mentioned the outro to the latter. Used to drop the needle back and forth on this for days. Was initially delighted when Nirvana championed it. Now, not so sure - it's become a Nirvana song

Meat Puppets were so weird and appealing

The Nirvana thing is a big part - I try to think of Plateau on its own terms as a song from this album, but the image of Kurt and Curt hanging out on a stage full of candles is etched pretty deep in my head.

But at least "Lake of Fire" is - forgive me - split in two for me. There's the more steady uptempo version that Nirvana championed and the Meat Puppets even re-recorded. And then there's what's still my favorite, this album version, that actually sounds like someone slipping into a lake of fire.

aurora borealis. where the guitar explodes into a thousand colors.

For fun today I made a quick 8 min edit of Plateau with the end section repeating over and over and over.

http://we.tl/2YQ3sD3Qqk

Sweet edit. Let me know when you get the 10:00:00 youtube version up.

Glad I'm not the only one who has ''fun'' like that.

the cover is pretty terrible. what is that supposed to be a picture of?

Its a bit like a proto Dirty Three album cover

I really love this album. On some days, I think it's the best album in the SST catalog. The Cobain-endorsed songs are all great, but Split Myself in Two and We're Here deserve shout outs. Ended up voting for "The Whistling Song".

the cover is pretty terrible. what is that supposed to be a picture of?

Thought of it as Beefheart-type modernist desert art.

It's also, in my mind, somewhat of a response to the cover of the Minutemen's The Punch Line.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"We're Here" has been scratching around in my head ever since this album came out.

voted "plateau," one of my all-time fave new weird america songs. but also wanted to give props to their wonderful, reissue-only, nodded-out cover of the rolling stones' "what to do."

I've never heard this until now and only knew the nirvana versions so I'm very grateful for this poll, thanks.

Glad to see so much love for this record, such an incredible and incredibly weird and beautiful album. Voted We're Here, because 15 years after hearing this record for the first time, I still think about that song about once a month

Aurora Borealis feels like their version of the Eagles song used on the Hitch-Hikers' Guide TV series.

I still can't get over We're Here - such serene, shimmering beauty.

love(d) this entire album, every song, so much but neglected it for over a decade, why???

prob voting plateau; but considered climbing & new gods & oh me

Xpost hahaha Stevie otm

best album

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

good poll, everyone;
now hit the showers!

buhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

this

is

the

best

album

anyone

ever

recorded

buhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I start work again on monday morning being a city planner for the second largest city in california after 15 (fifteen) fucking months of unemployment. I hope all other regular posters of ilxor.com ask themselves if they're having fun while they're posting

there's nothing on the top but a bucket a mop and an illustrated book about birds

"We are here" the voices sing
"We are here" the echo thunders
"Yes we are" the doorbell rings
"Here we are and here in numbers"

(hoping for full employment myself)

If the largest city in my state was in California, we'd be at No. 19, right between Modesto and Oxnard.

If my city was a song from Meat Puppets II, it'd be one of the bonus tracks, "What to Do".

i'm growing tired of living in Nixon's mess

@pplains

Modesto: American Graffiti
Oxnard: Love & Rockets