Huevos means "eggs" in Spanish. It also, slangily, refers to balls. It's clear which connotation the Meat Puppets were alluding to when they named this record. It's as if they traded in their stoner VW bus for a muscle car. To push the metaphor further, it's as if they put away the hallucinogens in favor of Jack Daniels. There are far fewer overtly psychedelic touches on HUEVOS than on previous records. Whereas the group's records used to travel a circuitous path, on HUEVOS, the Puppets stick to the main road.You know you're not listening to your grandfather's Meat Puppets from the opening notes of "Paradise," which bears the unmistakable mechanized churning of MTV-era ZZ Top. The sound is altogether thicker, and the vocals are less from the upper chest than the lower diaphragm. But amid the balls-to-the-wall rockers like "Automatic Mojo" are starbursts of color, most notably "Fruit," with its jiggly beat and sighing backup vocals, and the molten, sublime axe work that decorates "Dry Rain."
Meat Puppets - Huevos - Cassette tape on SST Records
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