Initially recorded with bassist Stele Kille at the controls and partly produced at the legendary Sunset Sound studios in LA by Dave Schiffman (who has worked with the late, great JOHNNY CASH amongst others), this is hailed as the best DEAD MEADOW record yet.
‘Old Growth’ is the band’s fifth studio album, and a freak-out of typically 'turn-on, tune-in' proportions. Changes of tempo send the stoner-metal surf-sound spinning wildly into Zappa territory. This is a place where the wah-pedal rules, and the bass grates and stutters as it anchors down the kind of straight-to-the-bridge riffing that’s guaranteed to turn out the contents of the mind from it’s farthest corners.
Slowed-down and staccato in places, the concoction weighs heavy on the soul. It’s most noticeable in tracks like the downer-slo-mo ‘What Needs Must Be’. I’m Gone’ has the same lazy tempo, but the sound is fuller, clumsier, splattered and endearing, deliciously wasted across a bouncing bass twang.
‘Seven Seers’ is a real shift in focus, with a cartoon nod to rock n’roll’s mid-late 6T’s/early seventies developments. This is trancelike, with eastern strings aiming for higher consciousness.
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However, decadence ultimately prevails, despite titles like ‘Keep On Walking’ – a track that evolves on shifting sands. Characterised by the same easy tempo, the riff, cyclical, mindlessly repetitive and hypnotic, runs seamlessly into the world peace polemic of ‘Hard People/Hard Times’.
Delicate? Yes, it is. As a swinging sixties period study it’s authentic to the point of self-reflexivity. In glorious technicolour slo-mo. Somewhere in there lies the key to something, for the pastiche elements are not merely an empty vessel. If you can tolerate such a languid tangled-up trip, then what you find of substance will endear you, abstract though it is.
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