Psych-Rockers Dig Zeppelin . . . Hendrix . . . Ringo?
By Andrew Clayman
Published in The Knoxville Voice, February 2008
Referring to Dead Meadow’s music as simply “college rock” hardly does justice to the full scope of this D.C. trio’s dorm room appeal. To put it more succinctly, no band this decade has done more to desegregate the nation’s classic-rock stoners, acid-dropping shoegazers, and coke-snorting indie-rockers than Dead Meadow. Even the straight-edge kid across the hall thinks they’re pretty sweet.
Boiled down, the Dead Meadow ingredients have always been blatantly obvious: the heavy, fuzzed-out blues rock of Zeppelin and Sabbath, the psychedelics of Floyd, the mystery and reverb of Spiritualized, and the Matador sanctioned coolness of Guided By Voices. Stirred together, however, an intriguing new stew is cooked up.
“As far as original influences, I definitely still listen to Zeppelin and Hendrix all the time,” says drummer Stephen McCarty. “But, having done this for a while now, you’re ready to branch out into more various things and see how you can weave that into the sound you’ve already got. I think a lot of that shines through on the new record, too, just with the different instrumentation—which has always been there, but has never been really recorded in such a pristine manner. It’s got a lot more clarity here.”
McCarty is referring to Dead Meadow’s latest release, Old Growth—their fifth studio album and third for the Matador label.
“We were in the Redwoods (National Forest), right before starting on the record, and something about the phrase ‘old growth’ seemed right to us,” McCarthy says, “based on where we’re at and our whole sound— the way it’s progressing.”
Indeed, the songs on Old Growth do sound like a methodical but relevant push forward in the mellower, more experimental direction the band established on 2005’s Feathers. Still, there were some considerable shake-ups along the way.
First, guitarist Cory Shane was let go after a brief tenure, reducing Dead Meadow back to the familiar threesome of singer/guitarist Jason Simon, bassist Steve Kille, and McCarty.
“It had been a three-piece lineup all but that one year and a half or so that (Shane) was with us,” McCarty says. “So, in some ways, it was really good to get back to the old basics. I think working with Cory gave Jason a lot more ideas of different things he could do. It was a good experience for the Feathers record. But it’s good to get back to something that better illustrates our live sound right now on a record.”
To accomplish that goal, McCarty, Simon, and Kille made another major move, this time of the geographical sort. After nearly a decade in Washington, D.C., Dead Meadow relocated to Los Angeles in 2007, and went to work recording Old Growth in L.A.’s legendary Sunset Sound Studios.
“It was so great!” says McCarty. “The room that we got to use was actually the last one that all four Beatles performed together in. It was for a Ringo recording. And there are some wonderful, haunted rooms above the area where Prince did Purple Rain, where apparently Jim Morrison used to hang out. It’s just so rich with the history of all the musicians who made records there.”
One listen to Old Growth tracks like “What Needs Must Be” and “The Queen of All Returns” would seem to indicate that some of classic rock’s ghosts may very well have been playing the muse for the Meadow men on this session. But there’s a lot more going on.
“We were definitely trying to get more of a live kind of feel, so we played all the basic tracks together, which is something we hadn’t really done,” McCarty explains. “The guitars had always had quite a bit of overdubbing in the past. So, I think the live feel of all the songs, particularly this recording technique, was really ideal for us.”
Frontman Jason Simon also continued his evolution as a songwriter, experimenting with pop melodies (“I’m Gone”), Black Keys-style blues riffing (“Between Me and the Ground”), and—like the great psychedelic acts of yesteryear— traditional Indian music (“Seven Seers”).
With Kille manning the sitar and McCarty infusing Eastern rhythms and percussion, Old Growth captures Dead Meadow’s skill and versatility better than any of their previous efforts.
“I think it’s totally about trying new things and adding more textures to our overall spectrum,” McCarty says.
As one would expect from a talented drummer in a Zeppelin-esque band, McCarty’s own style is usually compared to the great John Bonham. Interestingly enough, however, McCarty cites a very different sort of timekeeper as his all-time favorite.
“Well, Ringo (Starr) really wrote songs with the drums,” he says, bowing to the sometimes underappreciated Liverpudlian. “He played it as a totally musical instrument. Even though there are times where he’s doing stuff that’s unbelievably technical, you never feel like he’s showing off. He really plays to the service of the greater song, which is why so many of the Beatles songs have such amazing grooves. I mean, I love John Bonham, but he did a lot of stuff that was just like, ‘Hey, I can really play the drums really good. Check this out!’ Meanwhile, there’s Ringo, just doing his selfless but sensitive thing.”
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