Black Mountain

I used to have this little worn post-it stuck onto my desk at the office:
I used to Black Mountain
I used to Pink Mountaintops
I used to JagJaguwar
written on it in red ink, courtesy of a conversation I’d had with PB and meant to follow up on for years. I picked up Black Mountain’s debut LP, and listened, liked, and shelved it, for whatever reasons.

Then I got In the Future as a gift as a prelude to seeing them last week at Johnny Brenda’s. And! And!

It’s been three years since their debut album, and in the meantime, they’ve developed a definite bluesier, harder edge, making them less raw, but in a good we’ve-been-practicing sort of way. There is something dirtier, bleaker in what they have to say and how they say it now. “C’mon, let your halo down” opens up Angels with a tiredness that makes you remember the Doors more than the early Sabbath that everyone wants to compare them to. Although you can hear the Geezer Butler-esque heavy basslines throughout, and the intro to Stormy High is practically a tribute to Tommy Iommi, there’re echoes of the Robby Krieger/Ray Manzarek combo that keep it smarter.

At times, like throughout most of Wucan, the composition of the instruments and vocals is absolutely mesmerizing. And the play with syllable arrangements, “no, you don’t ever want to get some place where you cannot believe” against the rise and fall of the melody is clever enough you can forgive some of the spottier parts where the keyboards (3.01-3.54, for example) begin to degrade into synth-rock.

There’s a lot said about the Stephen McBean + Amber Webber dual vocals, but the real driving force is the drum and bass interplay—the intro combination in Tyrants is by far the most memorable 90 seconds in the album. It’s that heavy double-fisted drumming that pushes the album away from veering into some serious Pink Floyd territory (soft keyboard trills starting 2.54 into Queens Will Play, for example), although it was altogether much less so during the live show.

For better or worse, Stephen McBean’s voice sometimes gets a little too whiny and thin, especially in Evil Ways, which starts out so strong with the drum and keyboard entry, you wish it could’ve gone on a bit longer without interruption. He’s an indie-rocker stepping into the flannels and beard of Jim Morrison, and here and there, it shows.

There’s also something slightly PULP-y about this as well, like moments in the intro to Wild Wind, where it sounds like when Jarvis Cocker and Russell Senior would build up these blues-y early-in-the-morning-walk-back-home sort of rambles. And yes, I did sort of have a crush on the drummer, who looked like Trent Reznor back when he was thin and cute.

I know it’s early, but this is definitely in my Top 10 of 2008.