PUPPETS IN ORBIT

“OUT MY WAY.” Meat Puppets. SST. Like the great American crank iconoclast Captain Beefheart, the Meat Puppets make music for individuals. This band is free of ideology; they offer few opinions and make no attempts to convert you to their way of thinking.

This laissez-faire profile is partly attributable to the fact that--as is the case with most good bands--it’s hard to decipher exactly what the Meat Puppets sing about. Eschewing the rock staples of heartfelt confession/small-town saga in favor of fragmented collages of mood and texture, the Meat Puppets evoke sensations of motion, touch and smell. Their music feels weightless, it’s in orbit and it sparkles.

Their vocals and harmonies are occasionally almost flat and their music can seem bleached and wan. Such is not the case with this highly accessible six-song EP; in fact, the opening track, “She’s Hot,” could pass for a ZZ Top scorcher. A bundle of contradictions, the Puppets’ musical recipe encompasses everything from folk and bluegrass to power-chord rock, and their whimsical tunes owe as much to Jonathan Richman as they do to the psychedelic revival the group is often lumped in with.

The guitar pyrotechnics typical of ‘60s rock are a central ingredient in the Puppets’ high-speed impressionism, but rather than spotlight the fancy fretwork, they interweave it into an overall fabric of sound. This works to spectacular effect on five of the tracks. The one bum note they strike is a version of “Good Golly Miss Molly,” which they kick into screeching hyper-drive, thus robbing the song of the leering sexuality that makes it so delicious.

“What we’re trying to evoke is the essence that holds the leaves to the trees,” Puppet Curt Kirkwood has commented. Amazingly enough, the original material on “Out My Way” achieves that ethereal goal.