Curt Kirkwood

The first solo CD by ex-Meat Puppets leader Curt Kirkwood is a breath of fresh air for those of us who have been hoping this masterful guitarist and songwriter would find a comfortable setting for a fresh batch of compositions. The Meat Puppets’ albums and live shows were always leavened with some tasty acoustic moments, and here Dwight Yoakam’s longtime producer Pete Anderson has teamed up with Kirkwood to present an entire album of songs based around the songwriter’s acoustic guitar and warm, somewhat idiosyncratic vocals. Not to say that Kirkwood doesn’t layer some fine melodic electric guitar at appropriate moments. The arrangements are filled out with acoustic bass, mellotron, Hammond organ, and mandolin as well as piano, percussion and pedal steel. Lyrically, Kirkwood has always pursued an imagistic psychedelic muse, and the words on this album fit right in with the previous body of work. As he sings in “Beautiful Weapon,” “Seasons fall through time, changing landscapes in my mind … I love you. I love you. The rest is a lie.”