In 1984, Arizona brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood debuted Meat Puppets II, a genre-melding masterpiece that found the missing link between country and psychedelic rock.

In 1993, Kurt Cobain canonized three of the record's songs by covering them for Nirvana's historic MTV Unplugged taping. The Puppets, then little more than an obscure indie band with one very famous fan, had their place in rock history, secured when Cobain committed suicide and MTV aired the session ad nauseam the following year.

Scanning the audience at the Meat Puppets' show at the World Café on Saturday, it was hard not to think that Cobain would have been pleased to see so many teens - the product of his endorsement all these years later.

And yet, the Kirkwoods spent much of the set list proving that they have 11 albums not called Meat Puppets II. After surviving three decades, several long hiatuses, and Cris Kirkwood's dark foray into drug addiction and prison, being remembered for just one album would be a sad fate.

The audience seemed easy to convince - perhaps because the Kirkwoods provided a consistency in style and quality absent from their discography.

Early in the set, the band forged a groove based on Curt Kirkwood's arena-rock guitar heroics; Cris Kirkwood's nimble-fingered bass licks; their honey-sweet, back-porch harmonies; and drummer Shandon Sahm's country shuffle beats, which sashayed between toe-tapping and foot-stomping territories.

Samplings from their uneven past adhered to the winning template with surprising ease.

Even an encore of 1989's "Attacked By Monsters," built on a riff heavy enough for Motörhead, enjoyed a lift from the Kirkwoods' sunny country and western vocals.

Unlike the soulless cash-grabs and nostalgia peddling of some other indie rock forefathers still on the road, the brothers' recent efforts don't feel pointless. In fact, they seem almost essential - as if this is their chance to add a third milestone to their winding time line.

The sound of the Meat Puppets on Saturday was that of a band finally forging its identity, figuring out what it could have been all along.