I used to know a bunch of indie-rap kids in Baltimore who claimed they didn't listen to any rock music other than the Stooges and Dead Meadow. To them, Dead Meadow made (I'm paraphrasing from hazy memory) "blunted head-nod shit." And so, for at least a few, the D.C. band's endlessly languid psyche-rock riffage made them functionally pretty similar to, say, Pete Rock. Like Pete Rock, Dead Meadow have spent years working variations on an introverted thump, switching up their endless-repeat rhythmic ebb and flow just enough to stay interesting. Running out of ideas has never really been a problem for these dudes, since ideas are not their stock and trade. They make a dreamy shoegaze-informed strain of early-1970s blooz-choogle power-trio rock, and that's all they've ever made. But now they're 10 years and five albums into their existence, and at this point, it's hard to stay patient with this stuff. At their live shows, Dead Meadow sound gorgeously heavy for the first 20 minutes or so and then progressively more boring for every minute afterward. By now, their albums are starting to work the same way, and that's sort of a problem.
Since the release of 2005's Feathers, the band has relocated from D.C. to L.A. and returned to being a trio after additional guitarist Cory Shane came and went. Listening to Old Growth, though, there's barely any indication that anything has ever changed for this band. They've curbed some of their most indulgent impulses; there's no equivalent here to "Untitled", the 14-minute jam that ended Feathers. And they've made a few fruitful inroads into Espers-esque acoustic acid-folk; the vaguely Middle Eastern flourishes of "Seven Seers", in particular, stand out from an otherwise indistinguishable set of watery ambling riffage. It's weird how Stephen McCarty's drums seem to bang harder when they sound like they're being played on a phone book rather than on actual drums.
For the most part, though, Old Growth is exactly what this band has always done. The guitars lazily sprawl skyward, the bass burbles steadily, the cymbals splash. As autopilot as this band can be, there's always something there: A nice longing vocal melody, a beautifully assured guitar solo, a droning Mellotron that sets everything else off just right. But the record is dominated by nodded-out midtempo chugs like "I'm Gone" and "The Great Deceiver" and "Hard People/Hard Times", the last of which features some awfully incongruously angry protest lyrics even as the music exudes something less than apoplectic rage. Dead Meadow can write songs like these in their sleep, and they probably do.
Tidal drift is nothing new to this band. They've never made anything that much resembles metal, mostly because they've always buried their Sabbath-stomp riffs under layer upon layer of sleepy reverb and because Jason Simon's voice is a dead ringer for Jason Pierce of Spiritualized's icy nasal monotone. Inertia's always been there in the music, but it's never made its presence felt quite as much as it does on Old Growth. And so the album's standout moment is the only one where they show some teeth. "'Till Kingdom Come" is a slow, woozy jam, and nothing immediately sets it apart from anything else here. But then you notice that the central riff is genuinely heavy, that the band seems locked-in and alive. Drugs and diffusion will always be big parts of Dead Meadow, but those things can exist alongside discipline and purpose. It'd be nice if they just seemed a little more, I don't know, awake.
