(these are not going to be in strictly chronological order)
Meat Puppets: “Disappear”
from Rise To Your Knees (Anodyne)
naval grazing Out July 17
(review/interview, orig. pub. late June or early July 2007)
Twin blue skies, with some white, squeezed into big twin holes, over twin arcs of teeth: face of a pelvis, under a derby or a pagoda or both, against an earth-colored cloud. That’s the cover of Rise To Your Knees, the new Meat Puppets album. It’s the first album that brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood have made since 1995’s No Joke. Original drummer Derrick Bostrom has retired, but Ted Marcus sounds and even looks like him, just a bit. There are many songs on Rise (15, in 67-odd minutes). Several are sung from the point of view of someone who refers to himself (among others) as a sailor, and there’s a steady roll to much of the album, even when it speeds up a bit. The earth-colored vistas and waves bend in toward details: crap on his shoe, ice on the vine, smoke on the wire, storms under a leaf. And that’s okay. Despite it all, he sets out, not exactly like Odysseus, but he is surely going to the mall, “to make my purchase,” and he will not be distracted. “Disappear,” the first single, concentrates the album’s appeal: dour-toned lyricism, pastoral mechanics, elegant mud, eloquent mumbling. No, not (that much) like early R.E.M, although you could call the arrangements alt-classic. Please don’t. They jangle like well-coated nerves, more than they do like The Byrds’ legacy of grandfather clocks. And lead singer-guitarist Curt Kirkwood, who wrote all the songs, never is as nasal as Michael Stipe, and you can catch most of the words, and most of them are worth catching. On “Disappear, “ the most audible lines are, “We are trying, we are trying, to disappear.” Just folkie-psych-metal enough to associate with autumn. Season of harvest, season of decay: which smell is sweeter? This song knows, but it’s not telling. Or—is it--???
Meat Puppets’ singer-guitarist Curt Kirkwood on “Disappear”
This is the one song where most of the words aren’t intelligible, except for the chorus. So some of the questions are based on that. For one thing, since the Meat Puppets are just now reappearing, why are you already trying to disappear?
I think it’s more—try singing about something else. I’m not sure what. Well, actually, I did write it about cryptozoology. I’m singing about yetis. ‘Cause we had this friend, he’s a professional yeti hunter. And you can’t tell him that they don’t exist. It’ll piss him off, ‘cause he thinks you’re stupid. He knows you’re stupid, ‘cause he knows they exist. They’re trying not to be seen, apparently. So it’s kind of about that. It’s straight up, they’re pissed off, they’re an ancient race, and they don’t like to be seen. And I’m sure it’s allegorical too. I’m not sure that’s intentional. It kinda doesn’t sound like it’s straight up about yetis. But that’s what they do most of the time.
Yeah, just be elusive.
Yeah, that’s definitely part of it.
But it’s also kind of like the words are elusive and disappearing into the music, and the music is getting stronger, like two things at once. Like, “We’re disappearing, but we’re here, so…” Like a confrontation, or just really assertive.
Yeah, it’s a strong musical track, we’ve been playing that one live. It’s the only one of the new album that we’re playing live, so far. And it’s really fun to play live, I don’t think I enunciated any more live, but we came up with a cool way to put it on the record, with the higher vocal track that sounds like a spaceship, or a keyboard, or a guitar. Like from the In Through The Outdoor era of Led Zeppelin or something. It was kind of unintentional though, where you just mess with the effects. And that one sounds cool on that, and sets the track off. Generally I don’t deliberately mess anything up like that, but that what we did on that, and just let the words go, because they’re not that important. Kind of a silly song, so if you hear straight up singing on it, you might go, “ Yetis?”
The feeling I get from the sound of the words going into the music in “Disappear,” is what seems to be in the intelligible words of “Island, “ and really the sound of the whole album, is that you’re looking for a balance in the negative and positive, or some crap like that. Destruction and construction, disturbances, but the music is well-constructed, basically.
Well, I think it’s something I like, I think it comes from the painting. What I do, trying to find colors that work with each other, as much as the content, it’s the overall effect, and some of the stuff that I like most is from artists that can paint mundane things. Or like Goya, the “Fifth of May” painting, and it’s a beautiful painting, but it’s really evocative, because these people are being gunned down. Or the other one of his, “The Birth of Saturn,” which is just gnarly, and beautiful, and completely chaotic. I really like that about Jimi Hendrix, he could tear it up and make it beautiful at the same time. There’s definitely part of that, it’s part of the practice, that you’re kinda going for. A balance like that.
Here’s a note on “Disappear”: “This track is so tight, it’s pulling me into a particular moment or situation. A thought, or another action.” Was there a particular moment when you’d had some ideas for the song, and it all came together?
“Disappear” has gone through so many permutations for so long. I have a version I did with my friend Lisa Niemeyer, and with Bud Gaugh, it has a completely different chorus. She just turned me on to that, and Lisa and I did a duet record a couple of years back, when I quit doing Eyes Adrift. So she started singing that, and I said, “Oh my God, I forgot we did a version of that too!” And I’ve had that since I wrote it, while I was living in Venice Beach, in L.A. I wrote this riff, and this basic—initially, it was called “Savage,” and it had this libretto over it, that I was reading, from an interview with Fred Savage. This really gnarly effect on the voice, like, “War-raw-rat, Fred Savage likes to eat hamburrgurrs,” but it’s the same riff. And for some reason the “Savage” thing reminded me of Sasquatch and yetis. So I hadn’t really written the lyrics yet, but I renamed it “The March of The Disenfranchised Yetis.” So it’s gone through a lot, and I’ve recorded it a number of times, and I never really tried to put it down, as a thing. I’ve got some other really good versions, but this one is just killer, to me.
Why did you finally decide to put out this version?
I hadn’t done it with Chris, and I hadn’t released it in any version. It’s like, at a certain time, if I keep releasing stuff, it’s gonna get released, and I just want to find something that’s good enough---if it has potential, I’ll keep working on it. Some things didn’t work out at first, but that riff is really fun to play on guitar, long and short of it. That opening riff is a blast, and it just keeps coming back around.
I read that you played drums on several tracks, did you do that on here?
Ummm—no. Just vocals and guitar on that track.
Ted Marcus can play guitar and bass, did he play anything but drums on “Disappear”?
I don’t think he does, no. Could I have a chocolate milk, please?
(clerk) Sure!
Thanks. Okay, I’m done.
Last note: “The drone of this, it’s like a Buddhist truckdriving song, a Buddhist road song.” So, the last question is, Have you met the Buddha on the road?
The Buddha? On the road, have I? Yeah, I think I’m lookin’ at him right now. He has a video camera.
Uh-oh.
I think he’s gonna get me to sign a release. We’re stopped at a public roadside stop and yes, the Buddha is here, and he’s filming random people.
(Buddha) I’m just filming you guys.
Oh, see, he’s trying to get money off me now. He wants a donation. You never know when you’re going to run into the Buddha.
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