To mark 20 years peddling wondrously hazy psychedelic rock, Dead Meadow mainstays Jason Simon (nephew of The Wire creator David Simon, trivia nerds) and Steve Kille picked up the phone and enlisted past members including three drummers and a guitarist for the eight songs that comprise their lichen-wreathed new album.
But whereas you might expect such methods to produce an exercise in chummy nostalgia, The Nothing They Need is restless and slinky, jittering with warped stoner riffs that bleed into Floydian euphoria (Nobody Home), strutting boogie (Here with the Hawk) and bourbon blues (Keep Your Head, Unsettled Dust), as if corralling the old gang had somehow raised the bar for all participants.
Granted, the California-based group remain entirely reliant on late 1960s/early 70s acid-rock tropes (guitar swathed in fuzz, wah and tremelo, seven-miles-behind-the-beat drums lacquered with woody bombast) and Simon’s wan voice remains the least moreish element of the whole shebang, but Dead Meadow’s unwavering commitment to the formula that sparked their founding after two decades of underground acclaim is nothing if not laudable. Ditto their authoring of passages of scorched, down-tuned psychedelia such as The Light, a monged, meditative supernova the likes of which are only rivalled on these shores by Bedfordshire heads Wolf People.
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