Consumer Guide Album

Meat Puppets: Up on the Sun [SST, 1985]
Furious negativist then, goofy nature mystic now, Curt Kirkwood is the David Thomas of endearing sloppiness. The tunes unfold loosely and sweetly, with Curt's guitars not so much chiming as chattering in a nonchalantly unstylish take on neofolk lyricism. But the music's charms are a little too flaccid to hold up the most unabashedly lysergic worldview yet to emerge from postpunk. B+