#1018 Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II

Nirvana's unplugged nods notwithstanding, these guys are grossly underappreciated as influences on grunge and early indie: that raw guitar, that ragged vocal, those batshit lyrical turns, those stylistic dabblings, that general sense of strain; you can hear the spine laid bone by bone, from Pavement to Nirvana and right on through to The Men. And it's not just guitar crunch, it's little country touches and pretty instrumental interludes and adventurous detours that keep the listening experience exciting and unpredictable, recasting the excesses of hardcore punk and Sonic Youth experimentalism downright listenable. A thoroughly enjoyable, borderline brilliant album that was startlingly ahead of its time 4.5/5