The Groove Music Life

MEAT PUPPETS
Sewn Together
(Megaforce)
Available on CD, colored-vinyl LP, iTunes and AmazonMP3
GIRLS GENERATION (SDSN)
Genie: The Second Mini-Album
(SM Entertainment)
Available on CD

One of the reasons this year’s list took me awhile to finalize is because there were some albums I simply couldn’t bring myself to cut out of the list. This installment is one of the most extreme cases.

The Pups’ first album since brothers/founding members Curt and Cris Kirkwood reconvened, Rise To Your Knees (Anodyne, 2007), was a nice restart, but wasn’t completely up to the level of their classic back catalog. This time around, however, the group returned with all cylinders firing, recalling much of their glory days (Up On The Sun, Mirage, Too High To Die, Huevos) without breaking as much of a sweat. The album’s title seems more indicative of the band’s unlikely label for this release (the more metal-oriented Megaforce label) than for the state of the band’s lineup, which is playing like they never left in the first place.

As for the group known in their native Korea as So Nyeo Shi Dae: K-Pop isn’t something that I ever seriously delved into, and to be honest, I still really haven’t, except for this particular band (via the recommendation of my female counterpart, Vee from PinkWota.com). Genie, their current EP, got me hooked in with the title track and went from there. Besides the very catchy title song, the shameless 80’s pop of “Girlfriend” and the Strauss-interpoating “My Child” are the EP’s other high watermarks that had me going back and getting the rest of the group’s back catalog, which didn’t hook me as quickly as this EP did. But that’s OK, because if this EP is their current creative high point, then that’s enough to have me looking forward to future releases from them.