Dead Meadow - 'Old Growth' (Matador) Released 04/02/08

Put plain and simple, Dead Meadow were born to noodle. In their natural habitat skulking through lengthy walkabouts in jamsville, the Washington State combo cooks up an earth-trembling racket that’s known to transport unsuspecting listeners to the hazy late 60’s days when 95% of musos’ bodyweight consisted of hair and well-hidden stashes, and Led Zep, Hendrix, Sabbath and oodles of lesser purveyors of heavy-psych noodle, metallic dirge and on-the-nod stoner moves ruled the earth. In other words, we’re discussing no-nonsense power trio action: thudding beats, mammoth grooves and the type of face-melting fretboard-wrestling that would attract immediate attention from a campaign against amp abuse, should a movement against amplifiers’ harsh working conditions ever be founded.

Alas, the band’s chosen to drag axemaster Jason Simon’s dishwater-weak vocals in the spotlight on this, their fifth full-length release. Similar decisions haven’t mattered much on the three-piece’s previous outings, but - in a prime example of cruel irony at work - the considerable leaps towards more varied, nuanced regions Dead Meadow’s tunecraft’s taken since 2005’s excellent ‘Feathers’ means the severe limitations of Smith’s reedy voice are becoming near-impossible to ignore. Compare his strangulated whine to the muscular riff god strut on the ace opener ‘Ain’t Got Nothing (To Go Wrong)’ and it’s hard not to avoid thinking presume that Kille - one of the few fret-wranglers who can solo away for an aeon and leave the audience yearning for more of the same sweet stuff – has entered into some sort of a Faustian pact, exchanging his capacity to remain anywhere in the vicinity of a tune for an astounding prowess on the guitar hero department.

But – and this one’s a big ol’ but – when ‘Old Growth’s cooking on gas, which musically speaking translates into every moment not involving the clumsy anti-Bush broadside ‘Hard People/Hard Times’ (you know you’ve ****ed up big time when even bands whose lyrics department’s renowned for traipsing through the Middle Earth join the protest song campaign), it’s easy to stop paying attention to singing that’s like an incompetent David with no slingshot skills whatsoever next to the all-conquering Goliath evoked by the band’s earth-battering prowess. Surrender yourself to the earthy bounce of ‘Between Me and the Ground’, for example, or the colossal ‘Till Kingdom Come’, and ‘Old Growth’s guaranteed to deliver some pretty heavy-duty thrills to anyone smitten with Black Mountain, Dungen and their hairy, hazy-eyed ilk. The sprightly country-rock of ‘I’m Gone’, the bucolic picking of ‘Down Here’ and the raga-fuelled drone of ‘Seven Seers’, meanwhile, provide welcome diversions from the band’s hard-rocking default mode.