Curt Kirkwood's long-awaited solo debut is an album of subtle and off-kilter beauty.
When I say long-awaited, I mean by me. I can't speak for anyone else, but I've long hoped the former front man of the Meat Puppets would bring his twisty lyricism to the fore with a primarily acoustic album. That's what he and producer Pete Anderson have come up with on Snow.
Kirkwood's been recording for well over 20 years now. In the early 1980s, he formed the Meat Puppets with brother Cris on bass and their friend Derek Bostrom on drums. In 10 albums over about a dozen years, the "Pups" were one of the most influential underground bands. Born out of their desert home in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, the Meat Puppets sound blended disparate elements of country, metal, acid rock and hardcore punk. Their lyrics, most by Curt, drew on imagery from nature and dadaist poetry fueled by cannabis and psychedelics. The brothers sang purposely in close, frequently dissonant harmonies that paid ironic homage to sibling duos that came before. It was a glorious mess, and it inspired bands from Minneapolis to Seattle that later formed the core of the grunge and indie-rock movements of the '90s and beyond.
The band imploded in the face of near fame and Cris Kirkwood's heroin addiction in the late '90s. Curt moved to Austin, played in a couple of other short-lived bands, and did a little solo touring with the likes of Jerry Joseph. Momentum picked up when he reunited in Austin with Anderson, who had produced the Pups 1991 major-label debut, Forbidden Places.
Snow finds Kirkwood playing mostly acoustic guitars and penning some songs that, while retaining his signature lyrical flourishes, often touch closer to the heart than most anything he's recorded before. The most radio-friendly is the opener. "Golden Lies," carrying the same title as the last Meat Puppets album (also known as Meat Puppets 2.0, since Kirkwood was the only original member), has typical Kirkwood non-sequitur lyrics like "giant spiders are heavenly spies," and a catchy chorus, "Golden swans on the desert / recite golden lies." It's all delivered in Curt's distinctive quavery light baritone over a simply strummed acoustic guitar; pedal steel and piano fills add color.
The title track is a loping shuffle, its bare-bones arrangement played on guitar, electric bass and mandolin. The chorus provides Kirkwood's typically skewed pearls of wisdom that make sense if you don't think about them too much: "And it seems the sweetest things / are hidden in the fire / just like snow settles on barb wire."
In "Beautiful Weapon," Kirkwood voices a sentiment all too common in pop music but all but absent from his oeuvre: "I love you." The rest of the refrain reveals a sweet vulnerability: "I love you, I love you, the rest is a lie / what a beautiful weapon you've got in your eyes."
Lots of psychedelic imagery crops up in "Box of Limes," a shambling shuffle played on fingerpicked guitar and a slapped snare, with a dreamy middle-eight section. "Gold," an evocative minor-key waltz,has an English folk feel. Lovely vocal harmonies are laid down over fingerpicked guitar and acoustic bass, which is bowed in the outro section. Imagery from the natural world serves as metaphor: "Lightning for the trees / to keep away the cold / and rain for your heart / to melt away the gold." Lovely.
What amounts to the "second side" of this short and to-the-point album starts with "Here Comes Forever," a sweetly sentimental love song to, dare I say, one of Kirkwood's children, "my precious one," with simple lyrics worthy of a Woody Guthrie song.
Things get really fun on "Light Bulb," as Curt trots out his specialty, stream-of-consciousness lyrics over a fairly simple strummed melody. A typical sample: "If I had a wish / I'd wish I was a caveman / and I could fly like / a goldfish in quicksand."
As we near the end, the highly symbolic "In Bone" is nestled between two country songs. "Movin' On" is just what its title sounds like, a waltz-time country-folk tribute to the traveling life of a musician, or a truck driver. Dobro licks accentuate the desert-evoking lyrics. And "Circles," full of rain images, pedal steel whine and honky-tonk piano, evokes one of Kirkwood's heroes, George Jones.
Kirkwood and Anderson play most of the instruments, with a handful of guests on things like keyboards, bass and drums. In a couple of instances, the piano in particular sounds a little like an afterthought, but otherwise I have no complaints.
With Snow, Kirkwood has taken a step away from his tendency to hide a songwriter's vulnerabilities behind nonsense lyrics on the one hand and power guitar licks on the other. It's a welcome step, I hope the first of many in this direction.
