Playlouder - Music is the Network

Dead Meadows and Black Mountains… As you may have intimated from the strangely parallel titles above, we’re not talking nu-rave. No, this is drum pummelling hard riffing occasionally sitar twanging psychedelic rock. So grow out your beard, light a gigantic joint and nod solemnly along as we take an inner voyage into the depths of the world soul, via the transcendental medium of Really Big Riffs.

The evocatively named Dead Meadow have been noisily plying their trade for 8 years now, first turning heads’ heads back in 2000 with their doom-tastic Black Sabbath influenced self-titled debut. Old Growth, their 5th album, finds them continuing to tone down the balls-out riffs in favour of more compact songs and a dreamier, slightly more delicate sound. The bluesy repetitive stompers are still present and correct however, Jason Simon’s nasal yowl higher in the mix than before, his hazy whine intoning the narrative that comprises the album over fuzzy wah-wah wailings and shuffling drum patterns. These are coupled with cleaner acoustic strums like the purposeful I’m Gone with its storming guitar solo, and the Eastern tinged freak-out Seven Seers that busts out the sitars to familiar but pleasing effect

Canadian five-piece Black Mountain take similar influences as their starting point but roll in a very different direction. Whereas Dead Meadow are surrounded in a haze of laid-back fuzziness that can occasionally seem pretty directionless, just like your stoner mate, Black Mountain have got some sharp edges. Their 2nd album In the Future starts as it means to go on, pumping opener Stormy High demonstrating their mastery of the guitar-bass-drums heavy-rock template, as well as the organ and old-skool synth wizardry that throughout the album adds an exciting sheen to the proceedings preventing it all getting too furrow-browed and serious. There’s a real sense of drama here, an unashamed earnestness harking back to an era where cynicism and irony were not an ever-present spectre and some people thought that hey, maybe they could change the world with the power of psychedelic folk-rock.

It’s a fantastic, varied, album, lean and edgy at times, expansive and warm at others, from the lean bass pulsations and 70’s synth spirals of Wucan (that WILL get stuck on your head and not come out again) to the shimmering campfire acoustic whimsy of Stay Free, that was also alarmingly included on the Spiderman 3 soundtrack. And then, when you think they’ve used up all their tricks comes 17-minute “prog-spiritual” epic Bright Light that’s got to be one of the songs of the year so far. A wild wondering wandering meditation held in place by Stephen McBean and Amber Webber trading strung-out vocal lines, it lures you into its beguiling trance then pummels you into submission, blasts you out into the universe and leaves you floating naked and alone in the godless vacuum of deep space before finally coming back to rescue your tortured, pitiful soul from the abyss in one final blaze of glory. 

In their own ways both these albums can be seen as reactions to the contemporary situation we find ourselves in at the start of the new century, dispatches from the wild and woolly hinterlands, the fuzzy edges of society and psyche that illustrate that there is another way to be, a non-acceptance of the status quo and a searching for something more real in this increasingly bland and homogenous world. Dead Meadow seek to evoke a different place, telling a story throughout the album, attempting to transport the listener. Black Mountain take a more grounded, direct route, laying out their statement of intent for all to see and actively challenging the society to which they see themselves at odds with (though of course not at odds enough to pass up a recent appearance on the Conan O’Brien show). In musical terms there’s is the more exciting approach, but if you need some fuzzed out aural escapism in these dreary grey February days either of these albums can take you to head-nodding nirvana in no time.