On new album Warble Womb (Xemu), Dead Meadow continues going its own way with a thick, dense sound that includes traces of folk, metal, ’60s rock, swampy blues and murky psychedelia. Hints of Howlin’ Wolf and Neil Young also go drifting through the mix from time to time. The long hours the band puts into its music is evident on every track of Warble Womb, an album that took three years to put together. The songs were shaped in Dead Meadow’s home studio and involved experiments with new sounds and recording techniques. Guitarist Jason Simon will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Dead Meadow feature.
Simon: Dock Boggs is an Appalachian banjo player and singer from the 1920s. To me, his recordings are like some spine-chilling ghostly voice, echoing out from the distant past, calling to mind an otherworldly time I have trouble imaging ever existed. His nasally Appalachian twang and droning five-string banjo dance between major and minor, often never settling on either. His songs, murder ballads and tales of drunken woe, as well as his playing, pull equally from the old world and the new. Many of his songs can be traced back hundreds of years to old Scottish ballads, while it’s easy to hear the influence of the rural blues that was crossing the American South at that time.
Video after the jump.
