A Silver Mt. Zion: Born Into Trouble As The Sparks Fly Upward

A SILVER MT. ZION: BORN INTO TROUBLE AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD (2001)

1) Sisters! Brothers! Small Boats Of Fire Are Falling From The Sky!; 2) This Gentle Hearts Like Shot Birdʼs Fallen; 3)  Built Then Burnt [Hurrah! Hurrah!]; 4) Take These Hands And Throw Them In The River; 5) Couldʼve Moved Mountains; 6) Tho You Are Gone I Still Often Walk W/You; 7) CʼmonCOMEON (Loose An Endless Longing); 8) The Triumph Of Our Tired Eyes.

General verdict: Seems like a fairly rushed, rightdown lazy job from the potentially awesome «chamber subset» of GY!BE.

It is harder for me to get into Silver Mt. Zionʼs second album, and not least because they have decided to expand to a six-piece band now (the album is formally credited to «The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band», though I must say that the Tra-La-La Band is largely hiding behind the back of the Memorial Orchestra). Basically, the more people are gathered around Menuck, the more it begins to resemble standard GY!BE, while still lacking the energy and monumentality of the latter. The most obvious case in point would be the penultimate track, ʽCʼmonCOMEONʼ, an eight-minute crescendo that is totally in GY!Be style, but with very weak drums and without an impressive main theme — I mean, this is obviously not the kind of material for which youʼd have to start up a special side project.

The sub-formula that was elaborated on the bandʼs debut album still works, from time to time, and some of the soundscapes are impressive — nowhere more so than on the opening track, which might not be particularly reminiscent of "small boats of fire falling from the sky", but is still reminiscent of something. On top of the predictably minimalist piano pattern and subtle neo-classical violin lines the band overdubs a set of shrill, droning, bee-like string flourishes which add an odd psychedelic flavour to the overall post-apocalyptic atmosphere. It goes on for what might seem like an eternity, but length is no enemy for a well-developed and sonically unusual ambient groove. Unfortunately, already the second track, ʽThis Gentle Hearts...ʼ, shows that this is not going to be an exceptionless principle — it sounds like a variation on some baroque flourish that could open an 18th century opera, looped ad infinitum (well, for five minutes and forty-five seconds, to be precise), and this is the sort of minimalism that I could at best tolerate in an open-world video game, but not as a standalone piece.

The third track, ʽBuilt Then Burnʼ, is melodically almost indistinguishable from the first one — its only difference is a lengthy spoken intro, delivered by a kid in the most awkwardly melodramatic fashion possible, spouting forth neo-Biblical quasi-apocalyptic nonsense that can at best amuse, at worst seriously irritate (as opposed to, for instance, the deeply moving Coney Island monolog at the beginning of ʽSleepʼ). Sadly, this does not feel so much like a variation on GY!BE atmospherics as an amateurish and uninspired attempt to mimic that atmospherics on a smaller scale, with just about everything that could go wrong going wrong.

The fourth track introduces singing vocals — and with Menuck taking a more active role in this endeavour than ever before, it strikes me how much these Silver Mt. Zion vocal numbers feel like a failed rehearsal for Arcade Fire: from the loud and martial ʽTake These Handsʼ all the way to the closing choral lament ʽTriumph Of Our Tired Eyesʼ and its repetitive slogan of "musicians are cowards, musicians are cowards!", it all sounds half-baked and tentative. The vocals are there, but they are muddy and concealed, as if the singer were ashamed of himself, and the accompanying string parts are restrained and monotonous, as if passion were absolutely not a requirement for these collective anthems. In fact, structurally ʽTriumph Of Our Tired Eyesʼ could almost serve as a working model for Arcade Fireʼs ʽIn The Back Seatʼ, but there is nothing even remotely close to the deep cathartic feeling caused by the latter in the former.

Of course, if you tie down and gag your expectations, and simply take this whole thing on the level of «soundtrack to a lost movie», there is nothing particularly bad about it — the violins and cellos are stately and pretty in all their neo-classical flair, Menuckʼs plaintive voice is friendly and humble in all of its Canadian lonesomeness, and the overall atmosphere does at least match the albumʼs title, taken directly from the Book Of Job which is, expectedly, GY!BEʼs favorite part of the Old Testament (and should be everybodyʼs, I guess). But this is not right — all of these albums, side projects or not, are vastly conceptual at heart, and strive, or should strive, at hitting oneʼs emotional center... which is not that easy to do when you get this nasty intuitive feel that the band is really sleepwalking through most of this material.

I will still highlight the opening track with its bumblebee-flavored psychedelia as a relative success, but as for the rest, I shall just have to assume that the band members were too busy thinking of the upcoming GY!BE sessions to come up with some seriously thought-out material for this project. Which is a pity, because, as I have mentioned in the previous review, I think that the reduced chamber format of Silver Mt. Zion had plenty of potential. 

A Silver Mt. Zion: He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts Of Light Sometimes Grace The Corner Of Our Rooms...

A SILVER MT. ZION: HE HAS LEFT US ALONE BUT SHAFTS OF LIGHT SOMETIMES GRACE THE CORNER OF OUR ROOMS... (2000)

1) Broken Chords Can Sing A Little; 2) Sit In The Middle Of Three Galloping Dogs; 3)  Stumble Then Rise On Some Awkward Morning; 4) Movie (Never Made); 5) 13 Angels Standing Guard ʼround The Side Of Your Bed; 6) Long March Rocket Or Doomed Airliner; 7) Blown-Out Joy From Heavenʼs Mercied Hole; 8) For Wanda.

General verdict: GY!BE-lite for those who cannot or will not emotionally afford a symphony of a thousand — actually, a pretty viable alternative.

Not everybody knows that in between themselves and their various friends and relations, GY!BE have had approximately fifteen billion musical side projects going on over the past twenty years, in all sorts of imaginable and unimaginable configurations. Many of these projects existed solely for the purposes of being able to put out records with titles even longer than those of the regular GY!BE, but some actually had agendas of their own, and it would be irresponsible to just brush all this stuff off without listening. However, seeking them out one by one, and diligently reviewing all of them would take an extra lifetime, so I am going to focus on just a few which were arguably more important than others — those involving the bandʼs founding fathers and representing significant artistic variations while still preserving the base musical philosophy of GY!BE itself. And those which at least have Wikipedia pages of their own or something like that, because I donʼt really take pride in digging deeper than everybody else.

The first, and arguably the most important, of these side projects was A Silver Mt. Zion, later to be known as The (or Thee) Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra (plus or minus Tra-La-La Band), since it was led personally by Efrim Menuck, and the first lineup of this new band consisted of Menuck, GY!BE bassist Thierry Amar, and GY!BE violinist Sophie Trudeau, with just a few additional musicians on a handful of tracks. Menuck founded the band so he could test out ideas that would allegedly be unsuitable for the GY!BE format — essentially, I believe, he wanted to spend some time working in a more minimalistic, chamber-like environment, without all the monumentality of proverbial GY!BE crescendos.

At the same time, even the title of Silver Mt. Zionʼs first album is sufficient to understand that the basic vibe of this music would remain relatively unchanged. If anything, it is even closer to GY!BEʼs early beginnings (ʽThe Dead Flag Bluesʼ, etc.) than Lift Your Skinny Fists — more of that quietly mournful post-apocalyptic music frozen in a no-longer-inhabited world of dust and ashes, rather than the epic create-and-destroy-and-create-again musical waves of GY!BE at their orchestral peak. The pompousness of the albumʼs title is ever so slightly deflated upon learning that the record was dedicated by Menuck to the memory of his dog, recently deceased from cancer, but only very slightly — after all, Dog is God, isnʼt it? In addition, Menuck has stated that the record was supposed to have a specifically Judaistic feel, which, I think, stems more from the overall by-the-rivers-of-Babylon mournful vibe rather than from specific music elements, but then I am not the best connoisseur of Jewish religious music in the world, and I can only swear by my intuition that the music here is far more reminiscent of Góreckiʼs Third than any Jewish laments Iʼve ever heard. Not that it really matters.

The record itself is pretty good, though not quite the devastating tragic masterpiece as initially suggested by its musical themes. Menuck himself does not play that much guitar on it; instead, he embraces the piano, and most of the tracks are essentially a dialog between his modernistic / minimalistic piano playing and Sophie Trudeauʼs equally minimalistic violin lamentations, sometimes joined by Amarʼs sparse, jazzy bass plucking. Only one track feels like a slightly alleviated take on the classic GY!BE vibe — ʽSit In The Middle Of Three Galloping Dogsʼ, with Aidan Girt providing drum reinforcements, is the closest they come here to an actual GY!BE crescendo, though most of the crescendo effects are only provided by Girt himself and by Sophieʼs complex violin overdubs.

Judging the quality of the individual tracks is hard, and perhaps should be a better job for those with a heavy interest in contemporary classical music; my vague opinion is that the Menuck-Trudeau collaboration is competent and generates genuine serious atmosphere, but most of the tracks end up rather interchangeable, and the entire album works great as a mood-setter on a gray and depressing morning, with endless slow rain turning the ground to mush in front of your window, but not so great as a collection of individually memorable tracks with outstanding musical themes. At the very least, something like that see-sawing violin rhythm rocking the boat on ʽSit In The Middleʼ is more like a sad lullaby than a mind-blower of ʽStormʼ or ʽSleepʼ caliber, if you know what I mean.

Two quite unusual tracks, however, are sandwiched in the middle. ʽMovie (Never Made)ʼ is a rare example of a lyrical rant, delivered by Menuck to a quiet piano and bass musical background (no violin this time, or it would have drowned out his message) — itʼs not every day that you get to hear the guy singing, and maybe it is a good thing, because he sounds just like a generically over-emotive indie kid, but it is still interesting to hear him deliver his cryptic lyrics which go from Jewish references (dancing the horah on Mount Zion) to creepy visions of revolutionary violence ("letʼs televise and broadcast the raping of kings").

Essentially it still functions as merely a verbal introduction to the albumʼs centerpiece, ʽ13 Angels Standing Guard ʼRound The Side Of Your Bedʼ — regardless of whether you like or hate it, it is most certainly the one track here that you will not soon forget. Built around a rhythm track of treated vocal samples, it builds up in intensity with the gradual addition of Trudeauʼs violin overdubs, but the main focus is always on those wispy sighs and moans, with a «lead vocal» that rises in pitch from «angelese» to «chipmunkese» and, depending on your perspective, will come across as either ultra-heavenly or thoroughly ridiculous, the best thing about it being that you can shift your perspective any time, like in an optical illusion. I guess we could technically define the compositionʼs genre as «New Age», but with particularly strong emphasis on «New», because it will wreak havoc on your eardrums rather than placate them like a well-behaved New Age track by the likes of Enya typically should.

The rest of the album is nowhere near as experimental, because, as I have already said, most of these tricks you have already experienced on early GY!BE records. Still, I am a big admirer of Sophie Trudeauʼs violin work on the whole, and the record went down really easy on me — I certainly get the point of segregating a «mini-GY!BE vibe» from the pack, and I also appreciate that they settled for a relatively brief running time (a more minimalistic approach, after all, does require a more minimalistic presence in the spacetime continuum as well) — 47 minutes is just the right time to spare on a solitary cosmic lament about the end of the world as we know it.