Joe Stanton
Guitarist Stuart Benjamin plays face-melting solos.
Meat Jelly began as a solo project for Stuart Benjamin, a local guitarist with a love for blues and jazz.
A decade later, after several name and lineup changes, things have (ahem) solidified and gotten a bit more hardcore. These days, Meat Jelly is prepping for the release of a debut EP, Nevermind the Sandra Bullocks, Here’s the Blindside, on March 25 at The Frequency.
The punk and blues band — which features Benjamin, bassist Conor Maloney, drummer Jamie Goodrich-Ryan, and vocalist Carson Bell — has developed an assuredness not often heard on first releases.
Bell, a veteran of local hardcore bands Boulderfist and Under Waves, brings an intense vocal grit to the band, evident in the feral howl he displays in “Left Tackle,” the first single from Nevermind the Sandra Bullocks. Bell pinballs between shrieking and crooning, at times sounding like a dead ringer for Glassjaw’s Daryl Palumbo. His influences are noticeably post-hardcore, which makes him an interesting fit for Meat Jelly’s bluesy stomp.
The rest of the band rocks with a swagger seldom heard outside of high desert hellions like Queens of the Stone Age. An unreleased jam “Stu Put Beef (In the Vents)” is built around Benjamin’s frenetic riffing and a refrain of Bell shouting “mescaline!” And that’s all before it explodes into a face-melting guitar solo. This is, most likely, the kind of music Hunter S. Thompson would have enjoyed.