The Meat Puppets received an unexpected push into the spotlight by Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, who invited them to perform several of their songs with him on Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance. Cobain had fallen in love with the Meat Puppets’ beautifully warped desert arias, where the band’s stoner vibe made songs sound like heat-induced hallucinations. Nearly twenty years later, the Kirkwood brothers, Cris and Curt, are still channeling the mystique of such early albums as Meat Puppets II and Up On the Sun. The serpentine guitar lines of “Orange,” the southwestern harmonies of “Incomplete” and the massive hard psych-country rock of “Hour of the Idiot” are pure Meat Puppets at the peak of their powers. They’ve always mocked themselves in jest and “Damn Thing” proves they still don’t take themselves too seriously, as they conclude, “I don’t know a damn thing anyway” to a killer, shuffling beat and guitars so thick you can taste them. Not many folks expected these gents to still be recording vital music three decades onward, but they are, and they’re doing it well.