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Rat Farm
Rat Farm
Studio album by Meat Puppets
Released	April 16, 2013
Recorded	2012–2013
Genre	Alternative rock; country rock; psychedelia;
Length	45:52
Label	Megaforce
Producer	Curt Kirkwood
Meat Puppets chronology

Rat Farm is the fourteenth full-length studio album by the Meat Puppets. It was released on April 16, 2013, through Megaforce Records.^[2]

Background and recording

Background and writing

On writing the music Curt Kirkwood remarked: "I tried to write stuff that would stand on its own — just the chords and the melodies, and play it kind of straight... I think that was the guiding boundary that I gave myself. It was one of those things where a lot of times, in the past especially, Cris (bassist Cris Kirkwood) would go, ‘Well, that's all there is? Let's put a prog rock part in the middle.’ But I tried to hold it off as much as I could."^[2]

Content

Musical style

Lucy Jones of British music publication NME adjudged Rat Farm as "gently fried country-rock and psychedelia" and its guitar solos to be "Neil Young-worthy".^[1]

Curt Kirkwood, the band's singer/guitarist and primary songwriter, described the album as "real blown-out folk music".^[3]

Reception

As of June 2013, based on 17 reviews, Rat Farm has a score of 74 on Metacritic, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[4] This is the highest score of their albums released since 2000.^[5] The Independent described the album as "dizzying psychedelic country in finest Meat Puppets tradition, full of slightly off-centre harmonies in Grateful Dead manner, and plenty of Kirkwood's swirling, trippy guitar."^[6] Allmusic said: "The tracks on their 14th outing are the closest they've come in a long time to the colorful, no-frills brand of twangy alt-rock and informal punk (with hints of Americana, country, folk, and prog) that they instilled on their SST records."^[7] The Austin Chronicle said that Curt Kirkwood "continues penning some of the strongest, sweetest, and compellingly twisted material of his already storied songwriting career," and that "[t]here's enough distorted weirdness, easygoing melodies, and guitar both hard and jangly to demonstrate why the Meat Puppets influenced both Nirvana and R.E.M."^[8]

Track listing

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Rat Farm"	3:54
2.	"One More Drop"	3:46
3.	"Down"	3:25
4.	"Leave Your Head Alone"	4:20
5.	"Again"	3:25
6.	"You Don't Know"	4:13
7.	"Waiting"	3:14
8.	"Time and Money"	3:50
9.	"Sometimes Blue"	3:48
10.	"Original One"	4:12
11.	"River Rose"	3:22
12.	"Sweet"	4:22
Total length:		45:52