Washing up is hard to do. Or at least that's what I like to tell myself, if only because that makes it easier to believe it's just a fluke when talent falls on its face. I mean, god forbid my heroes and idols should just happen to tank; I mean, it's not a given that musicians lose their edge along with their hair... is it?. I find it sunnier to convince myself that these tankings are isolated incidents-- at least, until the washed-up begin to accrete, forming Farm Aid-sized clots in the arteries of the entertainment industry. Then I start to worry.

Listening to Eyes Adrift is like watching the fat Orson Welles play the fat Elvis (in a Quentin Tarantino film)-- which is to say, worrying. Technically, this band might as well be called the Meat Puppets, as frontman Curt Kirkwood used the name for his last album even after parting ways with the Pups of old (Derrick Bostrom and Kirkwood's brother Cris). Maybe he thought the name change would revitalize his sound, which, after the Puppets's fantastic run of albums in the 80s, had veered sharply into a sort of ZZ Top-country arena before becoming stuck in a bog of general alternativity.

But Kirkwood didn't just change the name-- that alone surely couldn't improve the music... but a change in lineup? Now we're talking. Apparently, while Curt was on his first solo tour, Nirvana's Krist Novoselic and Sublime's Bud Gaugh both called him, out of the blue, intent on a quick jam before he left town. The rest, as history, doesn't need to be repeated.

As members of mythical bands whose legends were cut short, you might imagine these two would have some kind of spark left to contribute. Unfortunately, as sidemen who both lost charismatic frontmen, they also tend to fall right in line behind Curt. When Nirvana, in their most magnanimous act of indie community service, brought the Kirkwood brothers on stage and covered three songs from Meat Puppets II for their "Unplugged" session, it sounded living, vital, and appropriate, with each group's distinct brand of nihilism rubbing up against the others.

Here, however, the great potential of Novoselic's menacing basswork gets summarily steamrolled by the overall cleanliness of the proceedings, and he takes a distant backseat to Kirkwood's guitar. Even his surprise turns on vocals, which come off as goofy but just raw enough to have a shot at working, can't survive in an atmosphere tailored to Kirkwood's adopted two-dimensional singing style. And, while a reggae experiment would probably have been ill-advised (as they usually are), the band's adherence to pop/rock rhythms doesn't give Gaugh a chance to shine, either. Even on the obligatory 15-minute closing jam, "Pasted", Kirkwood's guitar grabs the spotlight and refuses to let go.

Some of these songs, like Pasted, fail in fairly conventional, generic ways. The opener, "Sleight of Hand", is as thin as its title suggests, doing little more than establishing a shimmery lounge-jazz atmosphere. "Telescopes" goes to the other extreme, replicating the Pups's recent forays into benign metal with glibly surreal lyrics. Elsewhere, some initially promising songs are roughly strangled to death in their first minute; "Alaska" starts with a standard but pretty Kirkwood guitar arpeggio before mercilessly bludgeoning it with a power-chord chorus. Novoselic gives a gutsy vocal performance on the odd rockabilly number "Dottie Dawn and Julie Jewel", but Kirkwood, as on most of the rest of the record, can't think of anything better to do with the song than to add an effected guitar solo, this time sounding like Charlie Sexton in a wind tunnel.

The album's most likeable songs are its least adventurous ones; "Untried" has a pretty chorus melody echoed by a fluid guitar line, and "Pyramids" has a mellow sort of yearning to it. But most of this stuff is middling at best, and while it could be explained away by poor production or lack of effort, it doesn't take much to tip the scale in the other direction.

Enter "Inquiring Minds", a song that is, from start to finish, one giant convulsive cringe. Over a feathery guitar intro, Novoselic falsettos, "They put flowers on your grave, JonBenet," and the song crashes head-on into a wretched ballad about the murdered celebrity child. It's not just the lyrical obsession with exhuming the girl's body that makes this so awful; it's the fact that the song isn't really sure whether or not it's a tasteless parody. At times, the band seems to (understandably) offer sympathy to Ms Ramsey-- in the form of a kind line ("You can never ask them") or one of Kirkwood's prolific, dripping-with-sincerity solos-- only to snatch it right back with a sneer from Novoselic.

In "Solid", which sounds like an ode to lost inspiration, Kirkwood sings, "What I am's a plastic man.../ I could cut myself and nothing would come out/ 'Cause the blood is frozen solid in my veins." After a few listens, you begin to realize that there's nothing in the uninspired plod of the song to contradict him. Ultimately, Curt may be expressing some sort of universal truth about fame, talent, and insatiable expectations here. But did he really have to get together with a bunch of his similarly disillusioned friends to tell it (and destroy my illusions in the process)? Inquiring minds want to know.

-Brendan Reid, October 4th, 2002