Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 07/08/06
Label: V2

"None more black," as Spinal Tap's gormless Nigel Tuffnell famously had it - and Vancouver's Matthew Camirand could hardly disagree. The former member of cultish rockers The Black Halos currently plays bass for awesome psych rockers Black Mountain, but has temporarily abandoned his duties to sing with his own Blood Meridian project, alongside Black Mountain drummer Joshua Wells and guitarist Jeff Lee (of Black Dice), plus others. Add the borrowing of his band's name from the Cormac McCarthy novel and Camirand's mission statement - "sometimes you might have to say sh*t that someone might not wanna hear" - and it's small wonder Blood Meridian have fetched up in the heart of darkness.

Their second album offers little solace to any souls that might be floundering, but the very brutality of its message (essentially, life is tough and we're all alone) is itself a kind of succour. At least, it's a brooding, late-night set piece that provides the perfect backdrop for rueful introspection and anguished regret, with a few fingers of cheap whisky on the side. The sleevenotes state that, during recording on Vancouver Island, "there was little sun," which is as neat a metaphor as any for "Kick Up The Dust".

Blood Meridian share the aesthetics of Neil Young, Lou Reed circa "Coney Island Baby", The Gun Club and Nick Cave, but their vision of dirty country, gospel and bruised blues is filtered through a punk / grunge lens, which makes Australian bands The Saints, The Moodists and newcomers The Drones more obvious kindred spirits. Thus, when he slurs, "I promise not to f*ck up twice" in the lament for a love long since lost that is "Let It Come Down", Camirand is echoing chief Saint Chris Bailey's boozy emotionalism.

"Soldiers Of Christ", meanwhile, suggests The Velvet Underground tackling Young's "Old Man", the title track Ernest Tubbs interpreted by Nirvana, the plaintive "Try For You" and "McDonald's Blues" a meeting between "In Utero"-era Cobain and Johnny Cash and "In The Forest, Under The Moon", The Triffids' "In The Pines" remade as a deep-south spiritual.

It's with the anguished "I Don't Believe" however, that Camirand really lays bare his soul. "I don't believe in freedom and I don't believe there's happiness for me / And I don't believe in love and I don't believe you're out there for me," he sings. In less capable hands, this would sound maudlin at best, at worst mawkish, but Camirand cuts cleanly to the chase. Life might suck, is the message, but it's all we have. If you need company for the ride and can hack the discomfort, then "Kick Up The Dust" makes a damn fine guide.

    by Sharon O'Connell