Meat Puppets: Curt Kirkwood (vocals, guitar); Cris Kirkwood (vocals, bass); Derrick Bostrom (drums). Reissue producers: Derrick Bostrom, Tami Blevins, Ian Gilchrist, Troy Hansbrough. Recorded in 1983. Includes liner notes by Michael Azerrad, Derrick Bostrom, Robert Azerrad & Tom Carson. Digitally remastered by Stuart Sullivan (Arkadelphia's House Studio, November 1998). The early-'80s post-punk musings of the Meat Puppets give new meaning to the term alternative country. Instead of adding a country flavor to traditional rock, or overdriving a honky-tonk sound, the group achieved a genuine marriage of avant-rock weirdness and earthy Americana on this, their defining release. The frenzied two-step of Magic Toy Missing and Lost mates hoedown with electric freakout. The group's tripping-in-the-desert sense of neo-psychedelia is displayed at its apex on the twisted classic Plateau and the acid-drenched country-punk of New Gods. Like Neil Young (a strong influence), the Meat Puppets were blessed with a totally natural sense of strangeness that allowed them to be both of the earth and beyond it simultaneously.