Live Review: Meat Puppets, Carl Russo

Armed with a committed energy, local artist Carl Russo braves the stage solo tonight. Each of the earnest troubadour's intimate songs follow a similar structure: acoustic folk numbers building towards an impassioned last chorus. An echoing mic effect works nicely with Russo's solemn, wavering vocals. He offers a very different performance to the purported “very loud garage-rock band” he previously played in and, indeed, tonight's headliners.
Bassist Cris Kirkwood's artwork decorates the front foyer in preparation for this heavily anticipated Meat Puppets show and the room fills with a high ratio of flannelettes in the long stretch between sets. The Arizonans are finally introduced with an excited reminder that this tour marks their first visit to Australia in 21 years. After a repeated introduction with the jovial amendment that it's actually been 22 years, the band emerge to a raucous reception.  
This influential outfit, whose virtues were often extolled by Kurt Cobain, have maintained a more modest but highly enthusiastic following of both older and newer fans. With Kirkwood's guitarist/vocalist brother Curt leading the pack and Curt's son Elmo on rhythm guitar, Meat Puppets' line-up is a truly familial affair. Drummer Shandon Sahm is the odd one out (genetically speaking), but he enjoys himself thoroughly throughout the set; topless and sweating up a storm.
Rambling instrumental opener I'm A Mindless Idiot perfectly anticipates their brand of frantic, fuzzed-up hillbilly blues. We're taken through snippets of their extensive back catalogue with gems such as Oh, Me as well as Lost and Plateau. Curt's impressive whistled melody in The Whistling Song is in some ways a given, but it's as solid a distorted hoedown as you could hope to find this side of the equator. Other set standouts include the silky downwards scale of Up On The Sun, crowd favourite Lake Of Fire and an epic rendition of The Beach Boys' Sloop John B.
Whether Curt is looking wistfully off into the distance or squinting into the stage lights is unclear, but ultimately if you can handle a guitar like that it doesn't matter. A virtuosic performer, he treats us to face-melting solos and delicate, finger-plucking ingenuity. Sporting a baggy Pabst beer T-shirt, it seems as if he and the rest of the band have just rolled out of bed, which only exacerbates the apparent effortlessness of their performance. Songs with complex changes in tempo are consistently pulled off without a hitch.
Having honed their trademark fusion of sunny, country-psych rock since 1981, it'd be hard to find an act as tight and compelling as these guys.