Rat Farm is the fourteenth full-length studio album by the Meat Puppets. It was released on April 16, 2013, through Megaforce Records.[2]
| Rat Farm | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | April 16, 2013 | |||
| Recorded | 2012–2013 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 45:52 | |||
| Label | Megaforce | |||
| Producer | Curt Kirkwood | |||
| Meat Puppets chronology | ||||
| ||||
Background and recording
Background and writing
On writing the music Curt Kirkwood remarked: "I tried to write stuff that would stand on its own — just the chords and the melodies, and play it kind of straight... I think that was the guiding boundary that I gave myself. It was one of those things where a lot of times, in the past especially, Cris (bassist Cris Kirkwood) would go, ‘Well, that's all there is? Let's put a prog rock part in the middle.’ But I tried to hold it off as much as I could."[2]
Content
Musical style
Lucy Jones of British music publication NME adjudged Rat Farm as "gently fried country-rock and psychedelia" and its guitar solos to be "Neil Young-worthy".[1]
Curt Kirkwood, the band's singer/guitarist and primary songwriter, described the album as "real blown-out folk music".[3]
Reception
As of June 2013, based on 17 reviews, Rat Farm has a score of 74 on Metacritic, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[4] This is the highest score of their albums released since 2000.[5] The Independent described the album as "dizzying psychedelic country in finest Meat Puppets tradition, full of slightly off-centre harmonies in Grateful Dead manner, and plenty of Kirkwood's swirling, trippy guitar."[6] Allmusic said: "The tracks on their 14th outing are the closest they've come in a long time to the colorful, no-frills brand of twangy alt-rock and informal punk (with hints of Americana, country, folk, and prog) that they instilled on their SST records."[7] The Austin Chronicle said that Curt Kirkwood "continues penning some of the strongest, sweetest, and compellingly twisted material of his already storied songwriting career," and that "[t]here's enough distorted weirdness, easygoing melodies, and guitar both hard and jangly to demonstrate why the Meat Puppets influenced both Nirvana and R.E.M."[8]
Track listing
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Rat Farm" | 3:54 |
| 2. | "One More Drop" | 3:46 |
| 3. | "Down" | 3:25 |
| 4. | "Leave Your Head Alone" | 4:20 |
| 5. | "Again" | 3:25 |
| 6. | "You Don't Know" | 4:13 |
| 7. | "Waiting" | 3:14 |
| 8. | "Time and Money" | 3:50 |
| 9. | "Sometimes Blue" | 3:48 |
| 10. | "Original One" | 4:12 |
| 11. | "River Rose" | 3:22 |
| 12. | "Sweet" | 4:22 |
| Total length: | 45:52 | |
Personnel
- Curt Kirkwood – vocals, guitars, arrangements
- Cris Kirkwood – vocals, bass guitar
- Shandon Sahm – drums, percussion