The Meat Puppets are one of those bands that you just have to experience live to really appreciate. With the May 6, 2022 release of “Meat Puppets Live Manchester 2019,” the Meat Puppets deliver an album that captures their current five-piece incarnation in full flight.
In support of their most recent album “Dusty Notes,” the Puppets hit the road across the U.S., U.K. and Europe in 2019, with original members Curt Kirkwood (guitar), Cris Kirkwood (bass) and
Derrick Bostrom (drums), plus Elmo Kirkwood (guitar) and Ron Stabinsky (keyboards). During the band’s run of shows, they met up with videographer Yousef Sheikh and his crew, who not only captured
a multi-track audio recording of the band during its show in Manchester, but also created a multi-camera video production of the evening. The band posted some of it during their pandemic-imposed
two-year hiatus from touring, and when Darron Hemann of DC-Jam Records offered to release a limited-edition six-song picture disc based on the material, they jumped at the opportunity.
“Whatever annoyances and hardships come from going out on tour,” says the band’s leader Curt Kirkwood, “playing together night after night, listening to the music evolve, more than makes up for
it.” The band’s bass play Cris agrees. “It’s the cheapest form of space travel yet devised.”
The band worked with Yousef and Derek O’Brien of DOB Sound on a half dozen tracks, which highlight the amazing improvisational passages they crafted while on the road. With updated versions of
such Puppets classics as “Up on the Sun,” “Plateau,” “Seal Whales” and “Lake of Fire,” the old-timers relive their glory days of getting lost in sound. And loyalists will appreciate “Nine Pins” –
a new track from “Dusty Notes.”
Drummer Bostrom adds, “Yousef was fortunate enough to capture us on a good night. Sure, we were all exhausted, starving and half-sick, and the on-stage sound was terrible, but as this performance
shows, sometimes that helps.”
For folks who haven’t seen the Puppets in a while, this is a great reintroduction. For those who have been waiting to see them on their rescheduled May 2022 co-headlining tour with Mudhoney, it’s
a great preview.
“Meat Puppets Live Manchester 2019” is shipping in May 2022 as a limited-edition vinyl picture disc.
Meat Puppets are Curt Kirkwood, Cris Kirkwood, Derrick Bostrom, Elmo Kirkwood and Ron Stabinsky. “Meat Puppets Live Manchester 2019” is produced by Meat Puppets, recorded by Yousef Sheikh and
mixed by Derek O’Brien of DOB Sound.
