On Fingers That Dance to Invisible Sound--Up On The Sun-Meat Puppets Dreamtime Opus

Phoenix is in the desert. I've been there a few times and no matter how far the Phoenix metropolitan area expands, no matter how many Starbucks or Sushi bars get built, it's still desert. The Valley of The Sun. Definitely very different from the Northeastern US I am used to. So very brown--brown dirt, brown houses. Deserts seem to be places for reflection--so many religious creeds came from such an environment. And of course Alice Cooper and Stevie Nicks.

Not Too Much More--Too Much More

Back in 1984, a bunch of notable American "post-punk" albums were released on indie labels. Husker Du's concept album Zen Arcade (SST), The Minutemen's Double Nickels On The Dime (SST), The Replacement's Let It Be (Twin/Tone). Another great one from the SST label that is less remembered today is Phoenix's Meat Puppets' II album, a refreshing caterwauling burst of stoner country punk that at the time garnered impressive reviews. Plus a nice cave painting of an album cover.The Kirkwood brothers seemingly arrived out of nowhere, to college radio airplay and critical notoriety. Reminds me of a car drive out to nowhere, blindly finding your way through the eighties, without really a road map. Life was going off in a lot of directions, and even to this day it is a pretty ill defined period as compared to the three prior decades. Songs like Lost, Climbing, Split Myself In Two, and Plateau, are great songs that are perfect time capsules of that era, like an existential odyssey. But I think what was even more amazing and unique was their follow up album.

Up On the Sun is just such an odd unusual album. It is quite a departure from II, a stoned psychedelic sun damaged piece of jerky twitchy virtuosity, with mumbled croony vocals. I don't think there is anything out there quite like this. Musically it is really tight, not rough and lo-fi sounding like its predecessor. Not exactly a punk album like the prior, but punk in the fact that went out and created something really out there and weren't concerned about what was fashionable. I think that the unusual clipped chiming  guitar sound was created by Curt Kirkwood using a dime instead of a pick.

Up On The Sun is a drawling psychedelic drone shuffle--when I hear this I keep imagining desert gods dancing on top of mesas, stepping out of an air conditioned car and walking out into the heat blast of the Southwest. Maiden's Milk is a musical workout of an instrumental, with matching guitar and bass runs and insane whistling. Away is a twitchy slightly funky tune with more mumbly drones on vocals. Animal Kingdom is another highlight--what the song is about, I just don't know, but when I hear it they might be making a statement about the unity and wonder of the universe.

Hot Pink is an odd chant of a song, like a children's rhyme or like an arid version of The Banana Boat song. Swimming Ground is a warm nostalgic paean to childhood fun. Buckethead is also a fairly poppy trippy tune with some nice big hooks. Too Real is more of a conventional rocking song, with a ZZ-Top esque riff to it, which was later more fully explored on the Huevos album. Enchanted Pork Fist is another driving psychedelic headscratcher. Seal Whales is a shambling spaghetti western instrumental two-step. Two Rivers reminds me of an REM song melted in the heat. The finale Creator sounds a bit like an outtake from Meat Puppets II with the instrumentation from the current album. The overall feel is a little rougher with a little more wild off kilter energy---a great ending to the album. The Rykodisc reissue tacks on mainly dubbed out slower versions of some of the albums songs--recommended only if you are too wasted to change discs.

People often contrast this album to Meat Puppets II unfavorably, but I think that this album is an idiosyncratic gem--People were expecting a Meat Puppets III, but were served a change-up. The musical craftsmanship is impeccable and the songs are so creatively put together. A knock on the album is the vocals; no one would ever say that they are exceptional vocalists. But somehow everything fits on this so well, that I don't pay a lot of attention to the off key mumbling vocals. Another example of musicians following their own path, and coming up with something extraordinary.