Music Reviews : Meat Puppets Still Have Drive

The standard take on the Meat Puppets these days is that the veteran group, having helped define alternative rock’s independent spirit and musical freedom, has been bypassed by time and trends--like a once-important little town left isolated by a distant interstate that has drawn all the traffic away.

The Arizona-based group’s commercial momentum may be on the downgrade--consider that it’s soon to be the opening act for Stone Temple Pilots, who were just tots when Curt and Cris Kirkwood began blasting their folk- and country-tinged psychedelia out of the punk-rock scene--but at the Roxy on Tuesday the Puppets played like a band with something at stake.

The Kirkwood brothers, longtime drummer Derrick Bostrom and added guitarist Troy Meiss were like an around-the-bend Crazy Horse as they set off explosions of wildly virtuosic guitar rock, moving at amazing speed while locked in seemingly telepathic interplay. An accelerated Johnny Cash beat here, tight, tart bluegrass harmonies there and a couple of acoustic numbers expanded the range of a sound that shows signs of enduring as the classic rock of the punk generation.