Ah the days when music was real, where a tour a wasn't a tour unless it was undertaken in a behemoth of a bus, you weren't rock n roll unless you had groupies galore and a penchant for smashing hotel rooms and where you were classed as a freak or a geek dependent on your music tastes. DEAD MEADOW encapsulate all this through just playing some far out rock n roll.
They don't deal in songs as much as they do epics. Every song's a showcase for a jam to slink its way into life. Taking influences of 70's rock legends and 60's psychedelica, it's a sound that encourages minimal movement e.g. passing a joint. It's vast and it's heavy and it's really very good. Think the Secret Machines without the candy cane coating and you'll have an inkling of the musical indulgence Dead Meadow blatantly enjoy.
So there's an element of tediousness as you'd expect with any prog generated music and much of their sound relies on Jason Simon's guitar work but some mighty displays of musicianship are there to be appreciated. Stephen McCarty's all action drum solos would see Jon Bonham paradiddle his appreciation whilst the rest of the band create the kind of dream sequence ambience Cave In have strived for. It's a set that melts into a continually spacial jam and whilst it's a slight throwback, Dead Meadow put forward a strong case that rock's still alive and well.
As do BLACK MOUNTAIN, although it looks they found mummy's medicine cabinet and started playing with the valium when the glue just didn't cut it no more. Like the raggedy cousins of the Arcade Fire, Black Mountain thrive on an edgy, dark and lazily eerie sound reinforced with a similar grounding in 60's and 70's rock that Dead Meadow buy into.
|
Collectively it's not much of anything but a bit of everything. Brooding riffs, freewheeling guitar patterns and Stephen McBean's sluggish growl come gritty falsetto, complimented by Amber Webbers glazed backing vocals, create something harmoniously heavy and indolently eclectic. Entering to a rousing 'Modern Music' that leaps and bounds with the happy clappy chorus of '4,5,6,7,8,9,10', it's about the only discernible ray of proverbial sunshine that emanates from the stage.
The narcoleptic 'Don't run our hearts around' hammers into life in lethargic fits and starts as 'Druganaut' with it's slurring blues rhythm and vocal wails promises to degenerate into untold chaos, choosing instead to wallow in a Zeppelin esque riff that was taken right from under Jimmy's nose.
Lacking the vibrancy Arcade Fire possesses, Black Mountain's ominous drone is their peculiar strong point. Wading through all the finer points of the Zeppelin, Sabbath et al legacy Black Mountain have more than enough quality to avoid becoming another calamitous rehash of influences gone by. At times it's loose but never careless, where the guitars crunch and lurch they have the suitably hefty vocals to match. So they've got their influences and obvious ones at that but all importantly, they keep it credible.
Where's the peyote? This one always promised to be fun.
|
