Dark Meat: festival band with a capital F

One of the bands surrounded by the strongest buzz during SXSW before Easter was Dark Meat from Athens, Georgia. Dark Meat represents an extraordinary concert experience. The line-up is extensive, and there’s an abundance of musical impressions. Sometimes they come across as a marriage between Black Mountain and Polyphonic Spree, other times as the weird cousins of Mudhoney and Devendra Banhart. Listen to the freedom rocker “Freedom Ritual” or the violent “One More Trip” if you need convincing. This is Flower Child rock of the most exquisite quality. This band is a festival band with a capital F, and you don’t wanna miss ‘em at this year’s Øya Festival.

Dark Meat is a musical collective, with a varying number of members, that is into Southern rock, psychedelia, folk, country, rock, and R&B. This is dirty rock of the kind that makes even the CD reek of sweat and filth. Their full name is supposedly Dark Meat/Vomit Lasers Family Band/Galaxy. The whole sha-bang is led, after the best of his abilities, by guitarist and songwriter Jim McHugh, and normally he’s in charge of about 18 musicians. McHugh originally founded Dark Meat, along with bass player Ben Clack. These days, the band consists of a small number of core members and a wide selection of semi-steady associates. The whole bunch is currently touring the US in a homemade bus. We can easily picture it: a busload of semi-hippies on the road for two months without spending a single night in a hotel. These guys are living the old rock’n’roll myths all over again. The band has recently been signed to the hip Vice Records, which will be re-issuing the debut album ‘Universal Indians’. The album contains pleasant surprises and unpredictable plunges into every little nook and cranny of rock. It is also a kind of tribute to free-jazz legend Albert Ayler. Yet Dark Meat is in no way a jazz band, according to McHugh, because none of the musicians are actually skilled enough to attempt anything within that genre.

Listen to Dark Meat here!