Dead Meadow
5/2/05
When discussing Dead Meadow, ill-fitting Sabbath references are no longer an option. Kicking-up a psychedelic whirlwind since 1998, the D.C. band outgrew that rote pigeonhole some time ago, and on Feathers, their fourth full-length, the quartet imparts an even subtler drift.
The band's strongest effort to date, Feathers is an elegant slice of black-lit drone stuffed with magisterial rhythms that dart and howl around vocalist/guitarist Jason Simon's distant, shadowy incantations about the distance to heaven. It's the band's first collection as a quartet, and Cory Shane's added guitar allows for a more spacious biosphere and even denser atmospherics.
Purists needn't worry: The '70s hard rock is still there, as is the '60s psychedelia, but think more in terms of Ride's shoegaze hum commingling with bluesy Zeppelin, syrupy Blue Oyster Cult, opium-den Deep Purple. Hobbit fans will also be delighted to learn that the J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft vibes are kept burning in tracks like "Eyeless Gaze All Eye / Don't Tell The Riverman" and the final 13-minute epic, "Through The Gates Of The Sleepy Silver Door."
Regardless, stylistic shifts shouldn't come as a surprise: Dead Meadow's always been a rock anomaly. For starters, they released their first two albums—a six-song debut in 2000 and their sophomore follow-up Howls From The Hills in 2001—on Fugazi bassist Joe Lally's Tolotta Rcords. Then in 2002, The Brian Jonestown Massacre's Anton Newcombe recorded, produced, and released the live album, Got Live If You Want It, on his "Committee To Keep Music Evil" Bomp! Records imprint. Following that, they recorded a Peel session in Fugazi's D.C. practice space—the first outside of the BBC studios. Finally, in 2003 they released Shivering King And Others on Matador, a label known more for Guided By Voices and Pavement than munchies and pipers at the gates of dawn.
I recently had a conversation with guitarist/vocalist Jason Simon and bassist Steve Kille via telephone while they were on tour with Jennifer Gentle, supporting Feathers.
Where are you right now?
Steve: We're in Columbus, Ohio. We're playing at a place called Bourbon Street.
How long have you been out?
Steve: In total, I think about two months. We were in Europe, and then South by Southwest, and now we're doing this U.S. Tour.
Has it been different playing as a quartet?
Steve: Not really. We've been a four-piece for probably just over a year now, so we've done some tours as a four-piece before this one. This would just be the first album tour as a four piece. But no, not really many changes. We've known Cory for years, so it's like an old friend who's joined the band and can play on these shows and play on this record.
Did the addition of a second guitarist help facilitate Feathers' change of sound or have you been together long enough that you're just naturally moving in different directions?
Steve: I would definitely say it's the latter. I don't think we ever really set out to be a heavy rock band in particular. With three people playing it was like, how do you create the most amount of noise as three guys on stage? There've always been a lot of different aspects to our music, and this new record brings out some of that other stuff we're into.
I know the album's just out, but do you have new songs or sounds in mind for the next collection?
Jason: Definitely, definitely. So many. It just came out a little while ago, but those songs were written nine months ago or something. You have this whole idea of what you want to do with the record and you do it and then something's totally different... For me, as soon as the record comes out, I hear all these things that it's not... And I'm like, 'That's cool, this is a piece of Dead Meadow and it's something that we do and it's good,' but to me it's not like this is Dead Meadow and this is where we're at right now... It's where we were at for a short period of time.
Do you think people will finally drop the 'stoner rock' tag?
Jason: I never really thought of us as being that much a part of the stoner thing. But in reading a lot reviews, a lot of times the first thing people mention is Black Sabbath, same thing with Blue Cheer. I don't know if that's what people expect, if they automatically hear that. Who knows? [With Feathers], there's still been a lot more 'D.C. stoner band, Dead Meadow' than I'd expected. Though, now they do go into how it's a Planet Caravan sound and about how it reminds them of chiller Sabbath songs.
"At Her Open Door" strikes me as an early-'70s singer/songwriter thing.
Steve: Yeah, part of the reason a song like that didn't exist on the earlier record is just because we hadn't written it at the time. It's just a song we were feeling and just another aspect of the influences and what makes us excited about music, creating a song like that. There's been a lot of talk—for years now—about us doing some acoustic shows. I think there're a lot of lighter aspects to our music that you'll see as time goes on.
You guys are pretty clean cut. Do you think, visually, as a band, if you sported big lumberjack beards you'd have a different audience?
Jason: Who knows? I don't know. Maybe. I guess now we've been around a little bit longer, but there are still people every now and again, they're like, 'Wow, you guys are about fifteen years younger than I thought you'd be.'
You're linked to some intriguing characters, ranging from Anton Newcombe to Ian Mackaye. What did you make of Dig? I went by the Brian Jonestown Massacre site and noticed Anton wasn't so happy about it.
Steve: I saw the five-hour version, which of course covers so much more ground. It also paints a picture that the band is still together and doing stuff and touring, and that that was a period of time in their career, but not the final period of their career. The distributed version ends with Anton being arrested, which is why he put that comment about it on his website.
Jason: I saw it at Sundance. You know, I thought it was pretty cool, I guess. Jonestown are a band that spawned so many bands that are now bigger than them. It'd be cool to hopefully turn people on to what they're doing—and the fact that they've been doing it for so long and doing it better than most people, and that kind of thing.
Psychedelia has become a big deal. There are a lot of bands in the Bay Area. Then there's that whole scene around Twisted Village, which has been doing psych stuff for a long time. I was trying to come up with bands I could see you guys linked to—I was thinking maybe Bardo Pond. Are there bands you see as kindred spirits or following a similar aesthetic path?
Steve: It's weird. Every time you tour with a band, you may not necessarily think you have a connection, but then you kind of get to know people and then you're like, 'Oh wow, we're kind of coming from the same direction.' Over time, being from D.C. and meeting a lot of bands you would think are just straight-up punk bands, and then you see their record collections and realize they're into all this psychedelic stuff, too.
You toured with Comets On Fire, right?
Steve: Yeah, they're cool guys.
Jason: Definitely those guys. They're doing a project that's trying to be psychedelic in the true sense of 'let's do something with all these different levels that you can just get into deep and go as far as you want.' I think we definitely, at least in our own minds, haven't thought of ourselves being connected to any scene. And I doubt those guys do either. It is cool that all this psychedelic music is coming out. It seems like people are asking more from their music now. They want something they can really get into that has different levels, something they can put on and chill out to and get stoned. It would be easy for psychedelic to get hip and then become a style—we're trying to stay away from that.
Are you really into H.P. Lovecraft or is that merely something journalists use as shorthand, like saying prog rockers are into Dungeons And Dragons?
Jason: I've been a big fan of Lovecraft probably since early high school.
Cool. I've noticed he's been getting more recognition as of late—between the Modern Library edition to Michel Houellebecq's Lovecraft book.
Jason: It's cool that he's getting some recognition—it's much deserved. It's crazy, when you go to a Borders there're so many Stephen King books and so much shitty horror that's so fucking weak and there used to be just that one H. P. Lovecraft book, that old Del Ray edition, but now, you know, there are a million. Still, there are so many authors like Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Chambers, Arthur Machen, and all these other authors that are from the '30s or the turn of the century who are doing equally cool stuff but are still out of print.
A lot of that stuff goes back to Edgar Allen Poe, in one aspect of it. An aspect of like, you need to keep a mood, keep a vibe, and hold that vibe and that's what's essential. I think that's what's missing in a lot of music today—art, literature, everything—it's all about jumping around, it's all about crazy plot twists. It's like, man, why don't you just tell a simple story and hold the mood straight through? Who cares if you know what's coming? As long as it gets there in a way that is natural and works and holds the feeling of what you're trying to do.
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