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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Dead Meadow, a
stoner power-trio formed in 1998 in Washington by guitarist and vocalist
Jason Simon, debuted with
the six-song mini-album Dead Meadow (Tolotta, january 2001 -
Xemu, 2006)
and
Howls From The Hills (Tolotta, october 2001 - Xemu, 2007),
albums broadly inspired by Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath.
Got Live if You Want It (Committee to Keep Music Evil, 2002) documents
their live performances.
Shivering King And Others (Ba Da Ding, 2003) is another dose of
dark and slow riffs, ranging from Black Sabbath-ian monoliths
(I Love You Too) to extremely dilated space-rock
(Raise The Sails).
The music tends to repeat itself,
slightly more upbeat (Babbling Flower),
or more melodic (Good Morning)
or more trance-y (Everything's Going On)
or bluesier (The Golden Cloud)
or lazier (Heaven),
but it does deliver its punch.
Except for one incursion into psychedelic-folk (The Shivering King),
the album sounds more monotonous that it needs to be in order to deliver
its flagrant attack against the aesthetic conventions.
Adding Cory Shane on second guitar, Feathers (Matador, 2004) abandoned
the bleaker aspects of the previous album and instead
indulged into the morbid sounds that had been experimented on the previous
album. Hypnotic litanies such as Get Up On Down
and At Her Open Door
share the stage with noise-blues jams such as Let It All Pass
and the 15-minute closer
Through the Gates of the Sleepy Silver Door
(the album's standout, particularly the galactic instrumental coda in
the vein of early Pink Floyd).
In a typical move,
the booming blues cadences of Let's Jump In
are subdued by
ethereal guitar improvisation and dreamy whispered vocals,
evoking the most psychedelic
of the first Led Zeppelin album mixed with a Marc Bolan fairy tale.
Three tracks later,
Heaven revisits the idea with an even softer edge of bluesy guitars
and an ecstatic refrain.
The heavy thunder of Eyeless Gaze all Eye (the album's second
standout) decays into a quiet moaning and
whining reminiscent of Pink Floyd's languid elegies.
At the other end of the spectrum, Such Hawks Such Hounds evokes the
otherworldly atmosphere of the Doors' first album.
Relocated to Los Angeles and reduced to a trio, Dead Meadow increases the dose
of psychedelic and progressive nuances on Old Growth (2008).
This cerebral mid-tempo version of Dead Meadow represents the other side of
Feathers: meandering inspiration in search of a reason to exist.
Three Kings (Xemu) is a live album/dvd.
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