DEAD MEADOW + The High Dials @ Club Lambi

By Simon Howell - A Listening Ear - 04/23/2008

Before I get to the educational portion of this review, I'd like to say a few words about local openers The High Dials. I was struck, while listening to their last release War of the Wakening Phantoms and seeing them perform live, by the skewed nature of musical popularity. Their songs are slickly written and played, loaded with hooks and vocal harmonies, and some of them even stick in the mind after you've heard them, a rarity for indie-pop acts. Here's their problem: they lack…something. If they were British, they'd come here and headline venues twice the size of Lambi. If they were more eccentric and less workmanlike, they could develop Wolf Parade-like levels of fan devotion. If they had a younger and/or handsomer frontman, they'd make the indie girls swoon. As it is now, they show up, play their smartly written tunes expertly, and leave. When they want wider exposure, they appear in a Rogers ad, since none of the major online publications I visited had written a word about them. Are they the greatest unknown band ever? Definitely not -- much of their material doesn't stand out as memorable despite their obvious skill, and their albums meander far longer than they need to. Nevertheless, they deserve considerably better than they're getting.

Moving on,

Simon's Guide to Enjoying a Stoner Rock Concert While Not Stoned

I was a little concerned that I was going to be reviewing a Dead Meadow concert while not under the influence of any drugs. In my case, I simply don't do any of them, but perhaps you may find yourself in a similar predicament due to a lack of funds or some other complication. So here's my guide to getting the most out of your substance abusers of choice and their unholy racket.

1. Show up tired. This is the important one. If you're too alert, you won't be as inclined towards enjoying the slow, crushing grooves that typify good stoner rock. You might even find them a little annoying. When I arrived for the show, I was already a little bushed, so I sat down to watch the openers. Crucially, however, I stood up for Dead Meadow, preventing me from actually falling asleep -- if not necessarily preserving my attentive faculties. The other important thing to keep in mind is that any self-respecting stoner band should have some accompanying visual component to go with those grooves -- and indeed, Dead Meadow were projecting images evoking cell division all over the stage. To get a good sense of how tired I was, keep in mind that it took me a full ten minutes to figure out that the little black devices at the front of the stage were not, ineffective little fans, but projectors, and that they weren't hooked up to a sophisticated computer program, they just had little lava lamps inside them. Another good sign that the fatigue is working is that you might start to compose your own (terrible) songs while fixating on inane details around you. For instance, when I turned to spot The High Dials' Rishi Dhir staring at Dead Meadow bassist Steve Kille's remarkably nimble fingerwork, I started to piece together a song called "The Bassist Was Watching the Other Bassist." I forget how it goes now.

2. Show up relieved. Try to make sure you don't have to go to the bathroom during the show, since the longer you stand in one place, the more likely you are to be pleasantly entranced by the sounds being hurled at you. Plus, you never know when an actually distinct track will arise from the sonic morass to lift your attention a bit -- in this case, Feathers standout "At Her Open Door." Not that their set overall wasn't solid -- it was actually surprisingly engaging throughout -- but during certain stretches I was waiting for a hook or two. Regardless, your unbroken presence will heighten your overall enjoyment.

3. Stand on the bassist's side. Trust me, when the band starts to play, and you can barely stand upright due to following the previous instructions, you'll want to be getting the full force of that droning low end. Before long it will be a comfort to you, not unlike the sound of waves on a brisk summer night by the beach, or mild traffic going by your window in the late evening. Except that in this case you're probably surrounded by very sweaty people in what should be a distressingly confined space.

Follow these simple steps and you'll be good as blitzed.

Tune in to A Listening Ear with Simon every Friday from 2pm - 4pm