Black Mountain: IV

BLACK MOUNTAIN: IV (2016)

1) Mothers Of The Sun; 2) Florian Saucer Attack; 3) Defector; 4) You Can Dream; 5) Constellations; 6) Line Them All Up; 7) Cemetery Breeding; 8) (Over And Over) The Chain; 9) Crucify Me; 10) Space To Bakersfield.

A six-year period from 2010 to 2016 actually seems shorter these days than, say, a three-month period from July to September 1969 — therefore, do not get mad at Black Mountain just because they have been twiddling their thumbs all this time. (Technically, they did not: for instance, Amber Webber and Joshua Wells, who'd already released two «synth-folk» or «indietronica» albums as Lightning Dust in the 2000s, used the interval to make a third one — but do not rush to check them out, unless you are very much in love with Amber's wobbly voice and Joshua's antiquated electronic keyboards). At least this gave them a chance to scrape together some moments of real inspiration — I mean, let's face it, a musician only really should work when he or she feels like it, and if they only feel like it every six years or so, well, this kind of looks like a plus in the modern world.

Anyway, no title this time, just a small, barely visible Roman number, which might lead one to suspect they are taking their cue from Led Zeppelin here, and indirectly claim that this album will go down in history as containing their most immortal classics. In reality, this is just another Black Mountain album that offers no significant deviations from the old sound. They did have one membership change — Arjan Miranda replaces Matthew Camirand on bass — but other than that, they're still the same gloomy-idealistic neo-hippie band with a love for crushing Seventies' riffs, psychedelic haze, and messages in bottles reaching your 21st century shores from a past so distant, you'd have to spend your entire evening wondering just exactly in what way is this kind of sound and attitude supposed to be relevant. Then, out of sheer frustration, you'd just have to leave it be and simply enjoy the album for what it is rather than for what it could do to you.

The best news is that you can still rely upon them to bring out a decent (if thoroughly derivative) riff out of non-existence, or to put together some thick distorted guitar, some muscular drums, and a retro-futuristic synth pattern and make it all sound cool and credible. McBean and Webber distribute most of the lead vocals between themselves, like they usually do, and Webber once again takes the cake — for more than ten years now, she has sounded like a banshee apprentice that can never make it past the first grade, but now that we've got used to that, came to realize that she will probably stay in that mold forever, and dropped all further expectations... well, «peren­nial banshee apprentice» doesn't sound too bad, really.

She does a damn good job on the Hawkwind-ish rocker ʽFlorian Saucer Attackʼ, actually, where her usually shaky voice makes a huge effort to break through the thick wall of speedy metal rif­fage and wild Moogs, and, for once, she almost sounds like an overhyped Amazon princess; and the same combination of a quasi-military attitude with doom-and-gloom is heard on ʽConstella­tionsʼ, where she easily outsings McBean and adds proper attitude and feeling to the song's somewhat simplistic and silly-sounding  four-note riff (which seems like a deconstructed version of Led Zeppelin's ʽDancing Daysʼ or some other song like that). Out of McBean's shorter num­bers, ʽDefectorʼ is a good one, though, again, it will probably draw inevitable comparisons — this time, to Pink Floyd's ʽYoung Lustʼ, with which it shares a general «nasty» attitude and the chorus ("and now I wanna be a defector" sort of sounds like "ooh I need a dirty woman", doesn't it?), except that Black Mountain's music is almost totally devoid of sexuality (not that Floyd's wasn't, either — ʽYoung Lustʼ was a sarcastic parody).

However, the record in general rests on three 8-minute long pivots — everything else feels un­substantial in comparison to the «epic» numbers. ʽMothers Of The Sunʼ combines a monster Sabbath riff with Webber's organ-accompanied doomsday prayer, and is almost surprisingly efficient: as hard as it is for me these days to fall under the «doomsday spell» coming from any of the new bands, Black Mountain have by now soaked themselves so thoroughly in the spirits of their ancestors that sometimes they seem to be possessed by these spirits, and that might just be the only proper way to get a convincing doomsday attitude today. Compared to this, ʽ(Over And Over) The Chainʼ is a bit of a disappointment, a track closer in spirit to the Gothic cathedral of The Cure — but with a long long long keyboard intro that evokes memories of ʽShine On You Crazy Diamondʼ. Yet it is neither as sublimely textured as the Floyd epic, nor as perfectly over­laid with waves of depressed guitars and tortured vocals as the best stuff by the Cure, and seems way overlong. Well, in terms of build-up and bring-down it needs the length, but they are not as good at generating atmosphere with vast soundscapes as they are with concise riffage.

On the other hand, maybe they are when they really put their minds to it: ʽSpace To Bakersfieldʼ is quite a haunting conclusion, ending the album on as much of a high note as ʽMothers Of The Sunʼ started it. This time, it's like a joint tribute to ʽSpace Oddityʼ, with its haunting allegory of absolute loneliness, and ʽComfortably Numbʼ, with its musical marriage of celestial bliss and psychological terror. Here, the tune unwraps slowly and patiently, lulling you with velvety synth tapestries (Schmidt uses ABBA's ʽEagleʼ synth tone to put you high up in the sky), soft vocal harmonies, and minimalistic guitar effects for about five minutes, after which McBean slowly starts to unveil his best guitar solo on the record and maybe the best of his entire career — a choking, wobbly wah-wah wail the likes of which I remember previously hearing mostly on those drug-soaked Bardo Pond records. It might not be a particularly great guitar solo per se, but it feels supercool emerging out of the «celestial» part of the song and burying it underneath its acid fire for a couple minutes.

Overall, six years of waiting have not resulted in a major masterpiece, but they have resulted in Black Mountain managing to sound conservative and fresh at the same time, and that's the only thing that matters — personally, I'm pleased as heck to award them their fourth thumbs up in a row just for managing to stay so consistent. Not all the songs are equally nice (a few acoustic clunkers like ʽCrucify Meʼ are neither atmospheric nor hooky enough), and you could probably trim some fat off the 56-minute running length quite easily, but as far as imaginative trips down memory lane are concerned, IV is among the best ones I've heard in the last few years — not that it would do a lot of difference to anyone, since it sort of feels like Black Mountain have pretty much squandered away their entire fanbase in these six years. (Heck, as of July 2016, there's still no one around to even get this record its own Wikipedia page!).

Black Mountain: Wilderness Heart

BLACK MOUNTAIN: WILDERNESS HEART (2010)

1) The Hair Song; 2) Old Fangs; 3) Radiant Hearts; 4) Rollercoaster; 5) Let Spirits Ride; 6) Buried By The Blues; 7) The Way To Gone; 8) Wilderness Heart; 9) The Space Of Your Mind; 10) Sadie.

A funny thing happened to me on my way to summarizing Black Mountain's third album, ladies and gentlemen: I was all set to start talking about its subtle differences from Black Mountain's first and second albums, when I suddenly discovered I had entirely forgotten how Black Moun­tain's first and second albums actually sounded. They were heavy, melodic, and derivative, for sure, but the melodies? Were any of those songs actually worth anything? And will the songs from Wilderness Heart, which seem nice enough while they're still fresh, be worth anything in a few months' time? So many epic questions, so few trustworthy answers.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter. Perhaps the key to all this is that Black Mountain themselves do not think the world of their music. It is big and bombastic, not because the bombast is their musi­cal translation of the «blow their minds once and for all» idea, as it used to be, but simply because their pet heroes, from Neil Young to Black Sabbath, all happened to be bombastic — a taste-rela­ted coincidence. Take 'Let Spirits Ride', for instance, whose riff is but a minor variation on Sab­bath's proto-thrash classic 'Symptom Of The Universe'. When Tony Iommi wrote that riff, he laid it down with an inspired vengeance. When Black Mountain play it, they are simply showing their respect for the style. The loudness and brutality are there, for sure, but God-sent inspiration is not, reducing rock'n'roll to mannerism.

Don't get me wrong: while the songs are on, they're on. Third time around, the band does not take any unnecessary risks with extra-long tracks, and their influences are spread out in a very careful and deliberate manner, so that my earlier complaint about way too many Airplaneisms is no longer applicable at all. Psychedelia, hard rock, and folk combine in quasi-mathematical ways: for instance, if you divide the 10 songs into an imaginary A- and B-side (and you should: these guys only work in a vinyl day mood), the ratio is 4 heavy songs to 1 soft song on Side A and 4 soft songs to 1 heavy song on Side B.

The heavy riffs achieve their purposes, whether they be fake-heavy riffs (extra distortion laid on yer basic folk-rock pattern, as in 'Hair Song') or true-heavy riffs (the Sabbathisms of 'Let Spirits Ride' and the title track). They achieve them even better when attenuated by space-rock whoops from the band's Moog equipment ('Old Fangs') and wheezy, creaky psychedelic solos ('Rollercoa­ster'). Play it all at top volume, let your neighbours experience the kind of emotions their ances­tors had in the old days of heavy metal arisal.

The romantic ballads never fall short, either. The acoustic guitar/Mellotron combo on 'Ra­diant Hearts' is evocative. 'Buried By The Blues', with its memorable (for now! I'm listening to it right now — cannot guarantee what will happen in the next three hours!) chorus of "Away from the static and noise", is a gently touching bit of escapism. 'Sadie' is just the kind of perfect con­clusion for such an album: creepy dark folk, ominous for the sake of ominousness, with McBean's and Amber Webber's vocals merging perfectly for the chorus.

But it's all too calculated. More than ever before — maybe more than ever before, because, like I tell you, I already cannot recall a thing about Black Mountain's earlier records — I get this feeling that Black Mountain are simply trying to make that particular perfect record, that sincere gift of pity for aging baby boomers who think that punk rock and New Wave throttled good music and have searched, in vain, ever since 1975, for a time capsule. I do not surmise that such a record could not be made, of course, but Wilderness Heart proves, for the third time, that Black Moun­tain, despite all their professionalism and good intentions, are not the ideal band to make it. These songs all depart from old standards — respectable variations on old themes that are just it: varia­tions. When you're sick to death of the old standards, you'll want to suck on the variations. For a while. Then you'll be back to the old standards. Or, in a flash of progressivism, push on to Ani­mal Collective.

Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the album, and, like all Black Mountain records, past, present, and most likely future, it is a remorseless thumbs up. It is not up to me to decide if they really «live out» this music or not; I can only judge it on a simple basis — whether or not it bores me, whether or not it is awfully arranged or produced, and whether or not they stole all their melodies from Lenny Kravitz. Since Wilderness Heart is entertaining, tasteful, and about as original as a record of variations on classical subjects can be, why should I want to thwart anyone from explo­ring it? On the contrary — it is every good music lover's duty to convince that local teenage dum­my neighbour that Black Mountain are at least cooler than... uhh... Justin Bieber?

Check "Wilderness Heart" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Wilderness Heart" (MP3) on Amazon

Black Mountain: In The Future

BLACK MOUNTAIN: IN THE FUTURE (2008)

1) Stormy High; 2) Angels; 3) Tyrants; 4) Wucan; 5) Stay Free; 6) Queens Will Play; 7) Evil Ways; 8) Wild Wind; 9) Bright Lights; 10) Night Walks; 11*) Bastards Of Light; 12*) Thirteen Walls; 13*) Black Cat.

We here on Planet Earth are a continually bored race, one that, for reasons unknown and fiercely disputed, has been gi­ven the possibility of expanding our minds beyond the bare concept of species preservation and reproduction — and has discovered, much to its own frustration, that there really are no objects in this world worthy of the application of these expanded minds. So we have invented ourselves this thing called «A-R-T» to play around with — extracting previously non-existent sounds, images, and word combinations out of our swollen consciences, feeding our neighbours with the stuff and imagining that we are doing a great service to the Universe, even though there is not the slightest bit of evidence that the Universe actually gives a shit about it.

These thoughts may not only be banal, but also off target — yet, for some reason, I never stum­bled upon them when listening to Black Mountain's influences, from Jefferson Airplane to Hawk­wind, and here, well, they have pursued me throughout the entire seventy two minutes of In The Future. Can we call In The Future a boring imitation of a bunch of idols? But if we did, would that be interesting? Wouldn't it be more interesting to come back to the record for a second, third, fifty-fifth time, so that the gist of Black Mountain's contribution to humanity can be stated clearly and transparently? Paradoxically, the more derivative someone's art is, the more you have to think about it — the more justification it may require.

The reference to Hawkwind, by the way, was not off the cuff. In The Future justifies its title by giving us a spacier, sci-fi-er picture than the debut album, with more emphasis on trippy studio effects, Mellotrons, astral lyrics, and even the sleeve cover. Like before, Black Mountain do not hide behind a wall of metaphors — the album is called In The Future, and they actually sing about the future. This is honest. The downside is, of course, that they are not doing anything that has not already been done in the past. But we can downplay that, can't we?

I wish I could rave and rant about how the opening crunchy riff of 'Stormy High' blows my mind to tiny smithereens, smothers them in the fat sizzling oil of the Mellotrons and feeds them back to me on the acoustic waves of the band's terrifying choir of Valkyries. I cannot; this kind of rant should be left to intelligent, but ignorant fourteen-year-old nerds for whom Black Mountain is the default gateway to parallel worlds. But that does not mean — repeat, does not mean — that 'Stor­my High' is a bad, boring, or completely wasted rocker. On the contrary, I like it a lot, like I do pretty much every song on here. I simply find no meaningful or interesting way to describe its artistic ambitions. There's, uh, a thunderstorm brewing. Or something. Who cares?

You have to brace yourself for a lot of long songs — for leaden stoner riffs alternating with astral keyboard solos, for walls-of-sound alternating with quiet minimalistic drums-and-bass passages, for heaps of noise materializing into Grateful Dead-like jams and dissipating back into heaps of noise; for poppy verses and choruses mutating into nauseating repetitive mantras; for Fairport Convention and Black Sabbath sharing the same kennel. Puzzled you will be; bored, no.

Pretty much all of this can be found in the 16 minutes of 'Bright Lights', whose many different sections recall the grotesque, flipped out whatever-rock of Amon Düül II, except less technical. Let me quote Thom Jurek of the All-Music Guide on that: "Fuzzy electrics, shimmering acoustics, and trance-like keyboards flit in and out between the alternating vocals of McBean and Webber. The music picks up intensity, shifts direction numerous times, and careens across the rock and folkscapes of rock's history from the late '60s through the '70s with great focus, wit, and am­bition." Perfect description. The only aspect of this that Mr. Jurek has politely swept under the carpet is: WHAT'S THE POINT? If we want to careen across the rock and folkscapes of rock's his­tory, why not go straight to the source?

To understand why, let us take one of the album's best songs, 'Wucan'. We know the vibe; similar musi­cal landscapes of astral travel have been laid down by Pink Floyd, Hawkwind and their col­leagues and followers in a thick layer. But we do not know the hook — a morose, Eastern-soun­ding organ riff interweaving with an anthemic art-rock guitar riff. It is a good, strong, memorable hook that neither Hawkwind nor Pink Floyd could have fathered (the former would have drowned it behind a wall of distortion and other instruments, the latter did not much care for repetitive gui­tar riffs like these in the first place). Is it «Trademark Black Mountain Sound»? No; these guys have no real trademarks to call their own. But it is a cool sound that they arrived at under the in­fluence, but through their own free will.

The same goes for everything else. There are no rip-offs. There is no deep meaning, there is little adequacy — they make big, bold, bright statements that have no independent value and can only be relevant to those having, up till now, lived in a vacuum; but there is juicy music made here, with talent to burn and pleasures to reap. I like the cooky falsetto on 'Stay Free', the tired"Lay your halo down..." on 'Angels', the big ugly drumming and the good old «woman tone» on 'Evil Ways', I even like all the sixteen minutes of 'Bright Lights'. If they were to tell me that they are making A-R-T here, I would say that I'd be more interested in seeing them fuck a porcupine. But if they are simply having a good futuristic time, more power to them, because I have had a good futuristic time, too. And, although this time around my poor wrecked brain is leading a desperate fight to award the album a thumbs down — simply because it has tried to say so much about it and ended up say­ing so little — the heart holds the day. Thumbs up. Frankly, if they make three dozen more records like this, I won't be disappointed. Don't make the mistake of trying to think about this album, like I did. Feel positive.

Black Mountain: Black Mountain

BLACK MOUNTAIN: BLACK MOUNTAIN (2005)

1) Modern Music; 2) Don't Run Our Hearts Around; 3) Druganaut; 4) No Satisfaction; 5) Set Us Free; 6) No Hits; 7) Heart Of Snow; 8) Faulty Times.

What is it that makes neo-hippies different from old time hippies? In pure theory, the easiest thing is to say «Every­thing!» and go on a lengthy rant about imminently changing times. But, having listened to Black Mountain now, I suppose one could be prompted to think twice about that. These guys have shrunk down my conscience just as neatly as they happened to expand it.

Black Mountain, formerly called the «Back Mountain Army» (or, rather, the latter was basically Black Mountain the band plus a bunch of friends, relatives, roadies, cats, dogs, and crack whores), hail from Canada, an ideal place for all the neo-hippies to hail from — tasty social benefits and plenty of open space to procrastinate on, if one doesn't mind a little winter cold. Presumably, they are neo-hippies, but better than most: they not only call themselves artists, they also work pretty hard to deserve that title, which is a rarity.

The band's music has gained critical praise (otherwise I wouldn't have known about them), and the band itself has accumulated a moderate fan base, but overall my impression is that «The Peo­ple» have generally been colder towards Black Mountain than «The Judges». This is probably be­cause «The Peo­ple» tend to get irritated when the careful ratio of modern-to-ancient gets signifi­cantly tipped in favour of the latter — and Black Mountain make little, if any, secret about their musical ideals. Let us count off just a few models of adoration: (a) The Jefferson Airplane, (b) Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young... (c) ...& Young again, solo this time; (d) Blue Cheer (I was going to write 'Black Sabbath', but they do not care much for the ultra-heavy Sabbath guitar tone, so Blue Cheer is more like it; (e) The Grateful Dead; (f) The Jefferson Airplane again, because there is just no other way to stress how much these guys want to pass themselves off for a modern day 'Plane. Even their lead singer takes some bad cues from Marty Balin, while their lead singerine takes some good cues from Grace Slick.

The band's message is spelt out pretty transparently in the second song: "Let's find a better place, and quit this whole damn race" — not even the Airplane were that blunt about it. With a theme like that, you'd expect the underlying music to be pretty paranoid, and it is. Worried, nervous, consta­ntly shifting melodies, graced with lyrical themes of disgust ('No Hits', 'No Satisfaction', 'Faulty Times'), escape ('Don't Run Our Hearts Around', 'Set Us Free'), and passing out ('Drug­anaut') — although, to be frank, drugs as such have relatively little space on the album.

If the general feel of things is that simple, the only way Black Mountain could turn into an exci­ting record would be through songwriting — and performance. Well, one thing that can definitely be said in favour of it is that it is undeniably fun, no matter how bleak it sometimes sounds. From the opening comic chord of the saxophone and right down to the final wall-of-sound blast of 'Fau­lty Times', it is totally non-boring to wait for whatever else the band has in store for us. And, sin­ce they take their lessons from so many teachers, you can never tell if the next song is going to be fuzzy and carnivalesque ('Modern Music'), or strewn with mean heavy riffage ('Druganaut'), or be combining a kind of one-note Velvet Undeground drone with a lyrical nod to the Rolling Stones ('No Satisfaction' — which, musically, is sort of what happens when you mix 'Waiting For The Man' with 'Sing This All Together'), or invoke a sanctified Old Testamental spirit ('Set Us Free'). One song, 'No Hits', even goes out of the way to establish a techno rhythm and pierce you with a fully certified electronic arrangement — but even then, in a way, I see them as paying tribute to the likes of the Silver Apples and early Krautrock artists rather than Aphex Twin or Autechre.

On their own, the songs are nothing special. For each of these melodies, a Sixties musicologist will have little trouble establishing an exact list of sources. The playing — technically — is good, but nothing too extraordinary or virtuoso-style. The lead singer (Stephen McBean) has a «little guy» type of nasal whine that will not be for everyone; the second lead singer, Amber Webber, does a much better job at convincing me that the end of the world is near — and yet I still cannot see her beating Grace Slick, whom she quite obviously does set out to try to beat.

But, admittedly, this is a good, not bad example of kowtowing: they understand the spirit of how-it-used-to-be and they are capable of conjuring it. If the Jefferson Airplane were a necessary ingredient of their ge­neration, and if today's generation needs another Jefferson Airplane, en­ri­ched by the experience of the previous Jefferson Airplane, so be it. From my own point of view, Black Mountain do not say anything that I have not already heard — but what they repeat are pleasant sayings, and I do not mind at all to hear them again in a new combination. The heart, un­fortunately, refuses to budge, because a tribute is a tribute, no matter how many different people you are trying to pay tribute to all at once. But the brain has appreciated the complexity and un­predictability of the tribute, and, in the hopes of seeing the band eventually mature into something bigger than the sum of its influences, advances them a thumbs up. As a bonus provocation, try to find for yourself which of the eight songs quotes musically from 'Paint It Black'. (That's the one I spotted. There may be a miriad of others as well).