Dead Meadow with the Sons of Shame

Now that the leaves are mostly killed off and the afternoons have become long gray affairs with dark endings, it's the right time for the electric-folk-stoner-dirge of the aptly named Dead Meadow. With their shaggy riffs and shuffle-step tempos, Dead Meadow tread reverently on the bones of their ancestors, soaking British blues in the brown acid of post-Altamont psychedelia to create an ochre-and-sepia tie-dye that's as menacing as it is entrancing. Vocalist/guitarist Jason Simon's plaintive, lilting wail sounds just as ghostly as you'd expect, considering his father was the gnarled old codger with the bundle of sticks pictured on the inside cover of Led Zep's IV and his mother was the smudged witch immortalized on the front of Black Sabbath's debut album.

Well, maybe not, but when you hear him snarl, "Though the wind blew the sand across the face of the land/Doubt is the dirt that buries Man" somewhere in the Black Forest thickets of reverb and trudging bass that swathe "One and Old" in ominous shadow, you'd be hard pressed to believe he was born without supernatural progenitors or at least creepy English relatives. But son of a pudding! These guys are American, which just proves that if you turn off your radios and go looking for it, you'll find great music right outside your door -- or, in this case, right inside Radio Cherokee's door.