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.