Dead Meadow

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There are headphone albums -- and then there are albums that can only properly be heard through the telecom inside the helmet of a spacesuit. Feathers, Dead Meadow's fourth studio full-length, is exactly the latter. The problem is, you shouldn't have to be shuttled into orbit for a psychedelic record to shed gravity and spin its ambience; it ought to supply its own atmosphere. The group's previous release, The Shivering King and Others, erected a thick, seething membrane of proto-metal and proceeded to stuff it full of blinking lights and hell-scraping bass. But on this new disc, heft and spectacle are traded for a flimsy weightlessness: Guitars are shushed, tempos are hurried, and murky mystery is held too close to the sun. Oddly enough, Feathershits hardest when it ditches any pretense of density. "At Her Open Door" and "Stacy's Song" are cosmic acoustic tunes that quake with naked sadness. Only the quarter-hour-long coda "Through the Gates of the Sleepy Silver Door" reaches the thrust and altitude of Shivering King -- but for a vehicle with interplanetary designs, that's not enough to reach escape velocity.