The Meat Puppets
The Garage, London
30/05/2011

It’s pretty easy to feel cynical about all these indie rock legends getting back together. Sure, it can be a celebratory experience for fans (a la Pavement’s reappearance last year), or even re-energise a band that’s barely been on speaking terms for over a decade (hi, Dinosaur Jr.). But somewhere in the back of everyone’s minds lurks the suspicion that maybe a reunion might be a bad idea. What if the spark’s not there?

Happily, such concerns need not trouble Meat Puppets fans. They’ve been playing together again since 2006, with both the Kirkwood brothers on board. It’s great to see Cris looking so gleefully up-for-it, gurning through the likes of ‘Freeway’ with gusto. Curt, meanwhile, plays guitar like a man possessed. The always-sublime outro to ‘Plateau’ is particularly frazzled tonight, and by gosh, it’s exhilarating.

And that sort of thing is what we get all night: blistering country-driven rock’n’roll, nifty axework and more than enough nods to The Grateful Dead. It’s interesting to watch the constant switch between cowpunk stomps and near-grunge sludgers, and realise how the two styles complement each other more than you’d imagine. The handful of tracks from ace new album ‘Lollipop’ sound magnificent too, the gloriously laid-back finger-pickery of ‘Lantern’ a particular highlight. At times, The Fly’s companion observes, it all feels like a lesson in American songwriting. True dat, although mainly it’s just a really fucking good rock show.

The set finishes with a beautifully fragile cover of ‘Sloop John B’, which crashes headlong into an utterly brutal version of ‘Lake Of Fire’. Meat Puppets may be cranking out the classics for an older audience than many of their reunited indie brethren, but goddam, they still rock hard. What more do you need, really?

Will Fitzpatrick