Performer Notes

Meat Puppets: Curt Kirkwood (vocals, guitar); Kyle Ellison (guitar); Andrew Duplantis (bass); Shandon Sahm (drums).
Additional personnel includes: Abby Travis, Lisa Newmyer (vocals).
Recorded at Brooklyn Bridge Recording and Studio X, Austin, Texas; Westlake Studios, Los Angeles, California; Overdub Lane, Durham, North Carolina.
The Meat Puppets first album with their new lineup (including drummer Shandon Sahm, son of Tex-Mex great Doug Sahm, to whom the album is dedicated) is, as you would expect, a great big loud guitar blowout. It neatly mixes metal, punk, and psychedelia, sometimes within the same song.
On GOLDEN LIES, the country influences that made some of their '80s albums college radio favorites have here largely been bleached out. Lyrically the band continue to mine leader Curt Kirkwood's favorite vein of rednecks-on-acid surrealism. A particularly good example is on the concluding "Fatboy/Fat/Requiem," with its chorus "Stop abusing Martians," and an oompah-coda that sounds like a twisted Texas version of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.

Professional Reviews

Q (12/00, p.127) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...An intense experience..."

Alternative Press (12/00, p.102) - 4 out of 5 - "...Delectable....arguably their best effort since jumping to the majors....humming with chunky metal chords, suspicious scents of Beatlesque psychedelia and wah-pedal freakiness."

CMJ (12/00, p.64) - "...A triumphant trip through the remnants of Kirkwood's brain..."

Melody Maker (10/17/00, p.58) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...Updates their fractured country blues with some nods to Beck..."

Mojo (Publisher) (11/00, p.112) - "...[With] a more mental approach...there are glimpses of Curt [Kirkwood's] former shambling genius: 'I Quit' and 'Pieces Of Me' are both mournfully melodic..."