This next artist hasn't been seen for over two years of reviews - all the way back to Disc 4. It was fun to revisit them after all this time.
Disc 315 is...Wilderness Heart
Artist: Black Mountain
Year of Release: 2010
What’s Up With The Cover?: One of the greatest album covers in the collection. Here we have a fairly commonplace sight - a gargantuan great white shark lunging through the sky over a copse of trees. It is either heavily misty or the shark is coming through some kind of interdimensional portal. Either way, it is very cool and there's no need for you to worry - it's all done with mirrors.
How I Came To Know It: I took a chance on Black Mountain back in 2008 when their album "In The Future" was released (reviewed at Disc 4, as long time readers will know). "Wilderness Heart" is just me buying their latest release when it came out last year.
How It Stacks Up: I now have three Black Mountain CDs, and I have to say that "Wilderness Heart" has bested both of their previous efforts, and is my favourite record by them.
Rating: 4 stars.
When I reviewed "In The Future" I said that Black Mountain were a band with elements of Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd with a little modern indie rock thrown in. I said they were good, but took themselves too seriously to be great.
Fortunately, on "Wilderness Heart" the band has finally decided to just settle into their sound and stop trying to prove something by overdoing it on songs. This is a tight little record, clocking in at only 10 songs and just under forty three minutes in playing time. It is exactly what they needed to do to take the next step.
I don't mind a longer song if it needs to be longer (in fact on my recent review of Thelonious Monk's "Monk's Dream" I preferred the longer tracks). I just don't like to see it done without purpose, as I sometimes feel happens on Black Mountain's earlier work.
On "Wilderness Heart", band mastermind Stephen McBean doesn't overwrite the songs, and has learned when to say when. Amber Webber's voice is always beautiful in a resonating, otherworldly kind of way. She is employed as a musical foil to McBean, giving the album variety. When she deigns to sing back up, she turns McBean's lead into a much bigger sound. When singing at the forefront she doesn't overdo it, and let's her weirdness be intriguing without crossing the line into becoming a caricature of itself.
"Rollercoaster" has an opening riff that would make Tony Iommi proud, and the song's ability to shift seemlessly from soft to hard and back again is Black Mountain doing what they do best. "Old Fangs" and "Let Spirits Ride" have equally great riffs, although they eschew the hard/soft thing to just rock throughout.
On the opposite side, slower songs like "The Space Of Your Mind" and "Sadie" combine elements that are both emotionally touching and yet strangely dissonant through the clever use of production and reverb.
One minor quibble of too-clever writing still snuck in, however, as McBean sings in "Buried By The Blues": "Piper at the gates to steal you from the dawn." Yes, Black Mountain - I already figured Pink Floyd was one of your influences - there's no need to rework their expressions. It may seem to you to be paying homage, but I viewed it as winking a little overhard at the audience.
Lyrically, this is a minor incident, however. The lyrics aren't brilliant, but they work tonally with the music. Lines like "Together we'll fry on the plains like nuclear suns" (from "Sadie") are overwrought, but coupled with McBean's disturbing vibrato and the bands big atmospheric sound, they bring a nifty space-rock feel to a song that would otherwise just be another ho hum rock ballad.
Put together sequentially, the mix of music manages to come together as a cohesive collection much better than on previous efforts. By not overdoing it, Black Mountain proves that less is more on this record. In short, "Wilderness Heart" is Black Mountain doing all of the good things they have done on previous records, and finally cutting down on their bad habits.
Best tracks: Old Fangs, Rollercoaster, Let Spirits Ride, Wilderness Heart, The Space Of Your Mind, Sadie
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