Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart Album Review - REDEFINE magazine - music art film journalism

I’m not sure anyone’s writing shit about the dizzying spiritual discontent of the information/overpopulation age quite as effectively as Black Mountain’s Stephen McBean. Dude just sounds like he’s so far out there he couldn’t give a fuck, and maybe that’s something people should latch onto. Sure there’s a frightening new display of tragicomedy lurking around ever corner these days, but you’ve got to maintain; you’ve just got to freaking maintain. Count back from ten slowly. We’ve got electric guitars; we’ve got vintage synths. We’ve got videos about psychic witches. Ride the wave. Everything’s going to be okay.

Thanks, bro. I was really starting to lose it there with all this economic disaster warmongering bullshit. Now I’m back in a good place. The blues heal, I think I see what you’re saying.

Black Mountain – “Old Fangs” – DOWNLOAD MP3

I was actually kind of fearing reviewing this disc because I was such a fan of its predecessor, In The Future. I figured they might not quite be able to crank out that quality of songwriting again, but I learned a valuable lesson with this one: you should never count out Vancouver hippies. Just when you think they’ve cornered themselves into an insurmountable shadow of greatness from which they’ll never emerge, they step out of that dark shadow like a bunch of psychic faerie jesters equipped with enough spirit-summoning riffs to make your head explode. Forever this time.

But as with their prior work, it’s really the balance that makes this rule. For every thundering blues jam, there’s a slow-burning mid tempo number, or cosmic country light ballad, to appease your desire to chill quite spectacularly. As always though, it’s the subtle enchantment of Amber Webber’s vocals which rockets this up into the higher worlds of pleasant escapement. I could listen to this a thousand times, and probably will. Hyper-potent might be an understatement.