Dead Meadow - 'Dead Meadow' (Xemu) Released 02/10/06

Bands taking offence at former labels that unleash their clumsy first attempts at recording once their profile has ballooned keep music-biz orientated lawyers in bread and butter. Dead Meadow, however, have opted to help Xemu with their reissue program, starting with this self-titled debut, remixed and expanded from the six-track LP released in 2000 on Fugazi bassist Joe Lally's Tolotta label ('Howls From The Hills' and 'Rarities' will follow shortly).

Considering the mystic vibes that drip from these grooves, you'd presume the celebrated Washington, DC heavy-psych champions are by now so immersed in their Middle Earth-hued world of fields, castles, dragons and whatnot that consulting their legal team is no longer within the reach of their addled minds. The real rationale for co-operation, however, is more prosaic. Although Dead Meadow's sound has sharpened with subsequent releases, there is nothing tentative and amateurish about this blast of brain-frying power trio potency. In fact, the album provides such a wealth of heavily sedated shoegazing haze and blurry-eyed stoner-sludge fuzz it's almost worth the stratospheric price tags it's recently seen sporting on Ebay, at least if drifting through a psychedelic fug is your cup of oddly flavoured tea.

Turning the clocks back to a musty era when 'the man' was regularly baited via the decibel-hogging medium of blues-based bluster, Dead Meadow isn't exactly entering uncharted regions here. Which hardly matters, considering how enchantingly they navigate their spaced-out mash-up of Cream and Black Sabbath, with a sideline in narcoleptic drones, bucolic folk-blues and mind-expanding moments of stargazing space rock. Although the tunes are little more than excuses to embark on epic bouts of noodling, and Jason Simon's ethereal vocals occasionally drift to painfully strained regions, all shortcomings are instantly forgotten as soon as he launches into another raid on the fretboard. Anchored by the pulsating grooves and far-out funk of drummer Mark Laughlin and bassist Steve Kille, Simon emerges as one of the rare string-benders who should be thrust centre-stage for a spot of soloing at every opportunity. Even those not normally capable of mustering much excitement for technical excellence, guitar tones and such could well find themselves marveling at his jaw-dropping prowess, ranging from the doom-laden Tony Iommi riffage and Hendrix-ian wah-wah wizardy on 'Sleepy Silver Door' to the cosmic gracefulness of 'Greensky Greenlake ' and the trippy peaks and troughs of 'Beyond The Fields We Know'. 

Not quite a great lost psychedelic masterpiece, then, but anyone under the spell of Dungen's 'Ta Det Lungt' or Black Mountain will find plenty of disorientating thrills to turn on to here.