Pitchfork

While rumors of Kid 'n Play reuniting for a new House Party have sadly proven false, thankfully we have the next best thing: according to Billboard.com, artistically estranged brothers and living tongue-twisters Curt and Cris Kirkwood will don their Meat Puppets uniforms once again and reconvene for their first album together under the band's moniker since 1995's not-so-well-received No Joke!.

With a sound that Curt described as "sonic pyramids made out of garbage," the album is in the early stages of production, and will be the follow-up to 2000's Golden Lies-- which Curt made sans drummer Derrick Bostrom and after his brother's exile from the band due to complications from heroin use (which later included jail time for assault and getting shot).

Past indiscretions aside, however, Curt assured Billboard.com that his younger sibling is once again walking the straight and narrow-- well, hopefully at least walking-- saying of their recent exchanges, "I haven't seen my brother since like 1998, but I'm talking to him a lot. He's [been] clean for more than two years and he's all raring to go. Cris' resurrection-- it's like a Lazarus-type thing. I was just like, 'If Cris is back, I know his frame of mind.'"

"If he's upright and walking," Curt continued, "it's hard to knock him down."

Tim Alexander of Primus is expected to sit in on the drum kit (replacing an absent Bostrom, who declined the reunion stab), and while a full tracklist hasn't been nailed down yet, new songs expected for the disc include "Enemy Love Song", "I'm Not You", and, appropriately, "New Leaf". As the elder Kirkwood explained, "I've got the album written already. It's epic. It's big Meat Puppets stuff. I played some of [it] for [Cris] over the phone yesterday. I don't think this is going to be some sort of 'toss off' album." That's the spirit!

Predictably, no official release date has been set yet, but the band has noted that they'll record the disc themselves before shopping it around to labels, Mused Curt, "It's fun to see where this will fit in, in this present state of the business," saying also, "The fact that I don't have a contract is actually better, because I don't need to hear anybody else's opinion about the Meat Puppets at this point in my life." How he'll determine where the new record fits without hearing opinions is anybody's guess.

Following the recording process, expect a tour-- and, invariably, an onslaught of opinions.