Curt Kirkwood brushed shoulders with tragedy and had his hand in a number of broken bands, so it’s a surprise that it took until he was 46 to strike out on his own. The Meat Puppets, the underground art-punk trio he founded with brother Cris in the 1980s, tried out the mainstream after Kurt Cobain put them on “MTV Unplugged”. Yet even with that nudge into the spotlight, the band fell back on demented songs and (in Cris’ case) drugs. Here was a band that was truly too “alternative” for the alternative nation.
After three more bands, Kirkwood has taken the unusual step of calling up longtime Dwight Yoakam associate Pete Anderson, who was largely credited for blunting the Puppets’ ragged charm on their 1991 major-label debut Forbidden Places.
There are no ragged edges left in the late-career Kirkwood to iron out. This gentle, desert-dry album falls between the death songs of Hank Williams and the psychedelic country of Doug Sahm. Despite the spare setting (drums show up on only three songs), Kirkwood still can deliver beautiful imagery (“We find our troubles no matter where we are/Just like snow settles on barbed wire”), or make self-deprecation sound like love (“Lies light my heart/Truth would fall apart”).
His frail, stoner vocals create a childlike wonder, but it’s colored in smooth through Anderson’s use of steel guitar or trumpet. If it weren’t for the singer, the pop-driven “Beautiful Weapon” could be a hit; but then again, stranger things have happened.
