It's always interesting to see the roads that bands choose when making a comeback after a long time away. Take Arizona's Meat Puppets, always the most contrary of bands. Dusty Tales just released, is their first album for eight years, and it's worthy of a small celebration for its obdurate individuality if nothing else.
The band embrace their advancing years rather than raging against them, and Dusty Tales comes across as something of a local community hoedown. In many ways the spiritual forbears of the record might be New Purple Riders of the Sage, Poco or C,S,N & Y, and they're apposite selections giving the record a grained and ancient texture.
Meat Puppets always took an eccentric route to arrive at their chosen destination though and it's apt that the same idiosyncrasies surface here. After a clutch of likeable country pop opening tracks that wouldn't seem out of place on a Best of compilation, they veer off the desert road on fourth track, Unfrozen Memory to embrace the madness of the outback.
There are baroque, rococo moments, take album centerpiece The Great Awakening, which is almost Prog Country, but whatever style they choose there's a craftsman's mastery to the manner in which the band handle proceedings. A few tracks later on Vampyr's Winged Fantasy they go all Blue Oyster Cult on us in a Metalloid moment that I frankly found horrid. Nevertheless, if this means that the record doesn't always flow, then so be it. Meat Puppets were always going to conjure up the oddest brand of easy listening.
And now to the record's most surprising but strangely apposite moments. Their take on Sea of Heartbreak, Don Gibson's stone gold 1952 Country & Western classic. They hold this gem up to the light once more, and infuse it with fresh wonder, surging into its glorious chorus with barely disguised relish. It's a wonderful moment, like when R.E.M. broke into Don't Go Back to Rockville towards the end of the second side of Reckoning, reminding us that this is supposed to be about having fun after all.
Dusty Tales is a dignified but cranky beast, something from a bygone age, the sleeve image is well judged. You might not like every song on here but you'll probably be glad that they exist. Meat Puppets once again fly the flag against the ultimate sin of craven conformity.
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