Meet Matthew Camirand, bassist for that messy, uncontainable collective of Vancouver musicians known as Black Mountain and Pink Mountaintops, now shilling for his own band–Blood Meridian.

It’s been a few years since his buddy Stephen McBean’s Black Mountain was suddenly hoisted up and carried around like a prized Pomeranian by the mainstream rock press. Gusts of critical hallelujahs were heard around the world, and celebrity admirers Coldplay took them as openers on one of their massive stadium rock tours. The spin-off for Camirand–who had already established his own bona fides as a member of the Black Halos–was both good and bad; Blood Meridian was now guaranteed the attention of the press, but not always to their benefit.

"Somebody actually wrote a bad review of the Blood Meridian album the other day harping on me for whining," he says unbelievingly. "The gist of it was that ‘it must be really hard now that you’ve opened for Coldplay’–as though that was some kind of ticket to me making money. Like you open for Coldplay and you don’t have to work for the rest of your life."

More likely it would make you give up on the notion of playing music–but let it lie, let it lie. In any event, despite what one callow indie-rock purist has decreed, Camirand and Blood Meridian certainly haven’t released an album of whining. Kick Up the Dust is pure Southern Gothic, apropos for a band that named themselves after a Cormac McCarthy novel. There are flecks of Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s hoodoo-fied Gun Club and Neil Young circa Tonight’s the Night in it–disturbed, fatalistic, sometimes ugly, often morbid, mutant roots-rock; the Cowboy Junkies turned inside out.

Blood Meridian’s Saturday performance at the Sidetrack will be their last Canadian date before jetting to Europe a few days later for a European tour of their own, a jaunt they get to do without the collective tagging along as a package as they’ve done in the past.

"I’d rather not play twice in one night–it’s kind of a pain in the ass. I thought it would be fun, but it was actually no fun at all. Josh (Wells, drummer), who’s in all three bands, had to do three sets a night; it just about killed him."