Dead Meadow
Feathers

Having reached their fourth studio effort (fifth with the live album from two years ago), Dead Meadow deliver their most complete work yet.
"Feathers" marks an evolution in the band from Washington D.C.'s typical hypnotic-obsessive sound, thanks to a more varied approach to heavy psychedelic material, resulting in their music becoming more accessible.

The musical differences compared to previous productions are immediately evident in the opening track Let's Jump In, a song saturated with psychedelic fumes, progressing in a hypnotic and contemplative manner, but with a less gloomy and doomy atmosphere, dare I say almost "positive".
As with all the productions of the Dead Meadow, the album needs to be absorbed and metabolized with continuous listening, preferably with headphones, to fully enjoy the dizzying effect of the guitar textures.

At times, they seem to be worshipers of an improbable "cult of the wah-wah," the true protagonist of both this "Feathers" and previous works; listen to the swampy Get Up On Down to believe it, where the six-string seems to gain speech to produce mournful "whoooaaahhh-whoooaaahhh".
Somewhat disorienting are the bluesy experiments of At Her Open Door, which redeems itself, however, with an impressive final gallop, and the acoustic ballad Stacy's Song seems out of place, halfway between Smashing Pumpkins' "Pisces Iscariot" period and the (overrated) Brian Jonestown Massacre.

The rest is a multicolored psychedelic anthology, with predominant dark browns and greens, reaching its peak expression in the hidden final track, over 13 minutes of Black Sabbath lost in an acid ocean.
Honor, therefore, to the Meadow, who, despite being authors of music deeply rooted in the past, have managed to create an evocative and personal sound, a challenging feat in a musical realm like the currently saturated heavy psych scene, rife with dozens of clone bands.