Dead Meadow - Feathers [Matador 2005]
D.C.-based Dead Meadow are riding the same psych wave that propelled countless ’60s and ’70s acts to hallucinogenic eminence. Featuring gushing globs of guitar, shuddering bass and ethereal, if somewhat indistinct vocals, the band’s fifth disc, Feathers, is a gorgeously euphonic skull-crusher. While a great many contemporary bands are mining similar territory, Dead Meadows find a few new ways to blow minds.
What separates Dead Meadow from their latter-day peers is their spellbinding sense of hook. Feathers is cacophonous and epic, but ultimately catchy. The fuzzy congeniality of “Stacy’s Song” is a good example of the group's melodic sensibility. A gently tripped-out ballad, it’s kind of thing you might play for a special friend when coming down from a shared psychotropic experience.
Singer-guitarist Jason Simon rides the rails between the moon-addled dark magic of Barrett-era Floyd and the scorched-earth riffery of Black Sabbath, sometimes in the same song. While his guitar playing is convincing, he doesn’t possess the most compelling set of pipes in the world. Still, he knows how to work with what he’s got, delivering opaque vocal melodies well suited to the spectral haze. Second guitarist and newest member Cory Shane fills in the gaps with glassy, chiming licks that don’t distract from the proceedings. Jason Kille’s fluid and rubbery bass work is a treat; he offers needed punctuation to Simon and Shane’s cascading guitar figures. Drummer Mark Laughlin cracks and snaps somewhere in the distance, keeping the kettle just under a boil.
“Eyeless Gaze All Eye/Don’t Tell the Riverman” is the album’s centerpiece, a shuffling monstrosity ripped from the psych-rock playbook. The cyclical groove spins through several cycles before launching into a spidery guitar solo. After returning to its stuttering central riff, the tune then settles into Dark Side of the Moon territory – spatial, glacial and intersected with ghostly slide guitar.
The unearthly “Let It All Pass” owes much of its radiance to lilting guitar figures and an entrancing tempo. It also features a grinding wah-tinged guitar solo, which slices through the middle of the tune with arcane volition. Simon’s vocals sound charmingly cool and distant, his best performance on the album. The song’s lyrics – like much of the disc – are typical lysergic prose. But I do detect an H.P. Lovecraft influence here and there. To their credit, Dead Meadow evoke a florid dread not dissimilar to the writer's best work. .
Psych rock seems to be everywhere you look these days, but Dead Meadow achieve distinction through their innate ability to combine canny songwriting with sonic adventurousness. Loaded with interesting twists and turns, Feathers is another fine addition to their kaleidoscopic catalog.
http://massmirror.com/02603e4d488fd972f7d1cb348e229bea.html
Dead Meadow - Old Growth [Matador 2008]
Those of you of sound mind and judgement will probably baulk at the twin towers of retro silliness evoked by the terms psychedelia and stoner-rock. One is too vague to be meaningful in the 2008 musical landscape and the other is a diluted parody of its once gargantuan self. So it’s with some trepidation these terms are applied to the trend-bucking progression of Old Growth, the fifth record from Washington’s Dead Meadow. The key however, is there in that title.
Much like Comets On Fire did on 2006’s outstanding Avatar record, Dead Meadow have honed their retrospective impulses into a refined, not-a-drop-spilt distillation of all that’s come before and made a forward-thinking set of songs that could stake a strong claim as their finest yet.
A word of warning first: there are no pummelling riffs on Old Growth – the calling card of any self-respecting stoner set – but there are grooves aplenty and it is ultra heavy when it feels like it. Trading the bludgeon and feedback approach in favour of entrancing, elastic riffs that give you that swooping, negative gravity pull in your stomach, Dead Meadow are still very much a bunch of stoner nerds. Stick on a decent pair of headphones, check the lazy guitar scrapes of the central motif on ‘Ain’t Got Nothing (To Go Wrong)’ and just try not to feel even a little woozy, if you need further convincing. Accumulative subtleties, as on the intense and pulsating acoustic reminiscence of ‘Seven Seers’, show that stoner-rock need not always mean a lug-headed approximation of dusty Sabbath riffs.
As usual, Jason Simon’s vocal is little more than a drowsy, bit part muffle, traipsing in and out of the spotlight when the guitars and drums aren’t swirling around each other. The considered warmth and clarity of bassist Steven Kille’s production gives things a feeling of suggestive escapism where they might once have relied upon a muddy melange and the fantastical worlds of H.P. Lovecraft or Tolkien. Even with that escapism, there is a definite feel of three guys in a room here, but no one is fighting for space and they’ve given due compliment to each other. As a result, a song like ‘What Needs Must Be’ comfortably sways from laidback sing-along to fire-breathing wig-out and back again. In fact, if there was one recurring theme on ‘Old Growth’ it’s that no matter what the style or mood required of any given track, there is a dominant sense of three musicians absolutely at ease with each other, showboating only when the song allows.
And there are songs here, possibly even singles. Tracks like ‘I’m Gone’ or the almost Beatles-like jangle of ‘Keep On Walking’ are taut and reined where they might once have meandered and bloated to patience-trying lengths. That is perhaps the greatest triumph of Old Growth. Stylistically there is a different kind of freedom (there is even a nod to garage rock on ‘The Queen Of All Returns’) that seems less about affectation or indulgence and more about adhering to the spirit of each individual song, making for harder-fought but longer lasting rewards.
Ten years down the road and five studio albums in, the DC trio have exhumed the mule and found a way to freshly flog it. Here’s to another decade of progression.
http://www.mediafire.com/?6fowzoytyzv