Blood MeridianKick Up The Dust
[V2 Records - Sept 12th 2006]
*Sixeyes Score: 8.1 out of 10
Review by Alan Williamson
From the sounds of it, Blood Meridian would have you believe that their home, western coastal city, Vancouver, is all dusty brown and blood. With band leader, Matt Camarind (who also does time along with drummer, Joshua Wells, in Black Mountain and Pink Mountaintops), singing like his own blood doesn't course through his body, it sifts, a fine cadmium red powder drifting in a 98.6° F breeze... hanging in the air like living cigarette smoke, I wonder if Johnny Cash and Nick Cave are guiding his righteous hand. Are the songs on Kick Up The Dust murder ballads without the fatal blow? Their characters mired in the bloody shadows of a simmering fever... forever under the knife, but never released. Or are these ghost songs? "In The Forest, Under The Moon" sounds like a ghost song to me, as does the track which follows, "Good Lover". "In The Forest..." opening with Camarind in spooky falsetto mode, his long drawn out "Ohhhhh..." a blue soughing wind in the moonlit trees.
Blood Meridian (J. Wells - drums, Shira Blustein - organ/pianos, Kevin Grant - bass, and Jeff Lee - guitar, along with Camirand) exist somewhere between murder ballads and ghost songs... they're tattooed spectres shrouded in suburban dust, punk power thrown off it's horse. They're dusty punks looking hard into their aging reflections, tracing the ghosts of wrinkles with music and melody... with Camarind writing the epitaphs of life's blue bruises and making a mark for himself and the band. Blood Meridian have pumped new blood into country blues, a genre which has been resurrected countless times, and they've got it fallin' hard, lovin' hard, and breakin' hard. They've done it right... buy this one.
BUY Blood Meridian
+ kick up the dust
Get more Blood Meridian at the Hype Machine.
Alan Williamson does not have 'six eyes'... no matter what you've heard.
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