Released on July 17, 2007,
Rise to Your Knees is the Meat Puppets' eleventh full-length studio album, and the first to include both Curt and Cris Kirkwood since 1995's
No Joke!. Since it had a one month advance release on the iTunes Music Store and eMusic, I didn't drag my butt out to Best Buy to get the CD until mid-August. The cute little teen girl behind the counter wanted to know if it was some sort of death metal CD.
Far from a death metal CD, this disc still isn't what most would consider "accessible" by the general public. But then, the Puppets have never really aimed for that main stream audience. It's rough, it's edgy, and it's definitely the Meat Puppets, and if you're a fan like I am you will enjoy it.
The opening track, "Fly Like The Wind," is a low, slow raw song with lots of fuzzy guitars. "Radio Moth" has a big sweeping sound and would be a great single release. The song "Tiny Kingdom" has an interesting layered sound with a plucky guit-jo and a chorus that sounds all the world like an XTC song. The song "Enemy Love" sounds like it was written for Elvis Costello. Other songs worth noting are "New Leaf" with it's brusque busyness, and "The Ship," another song with a big sweeping sound. Probably one of the disc's best tracks is "Island," with its memorable harmony. All in all, this disc is bound to inspire another new crop of young musicians not afraid to challenge the boundaries and make music because they like making music, not because they are trying to fit some record companies mold of what is "marketable."
Track list under the jump.