Welcome back to the CD Odyssey! Today we dive
back into folk music. There was a time when folk music was all I listened to. I
still love folk, but there’s just too much good music out there to limit
yourself by genre. Whenever someone says to me “I only listen to [insert genre]
I wonder what’s wrong with them. Are their ears broken?
Disc 1316 is… Magic Ship
Artist:
Mountain Man
Year of Release: 2018
What’s up with the
Cover?
Three women and two llamas. Or maybe those are alpacas. I’m really not sure
what they are, but I am sure that they don’t belong in the house.
How I Came to Know
It: The usual boring way. I
read a review of this album (I believe in a folk magazine) and decided to check
them out. After that, it became hard to find but eventually it showed up in the
“Miscellaneous M” section of a big record store in Portland. Yes, I was looking
for it. I keep a list.
How It Stacks Up: I only have this one Mountain Man album, so
there is nothing to stack it up against.
Ratings: 3 stars
Is it possible to have an album that is too folky?
I would’ve said that would be impossible, but Mountain Man’s “Magic Ship” put that
statement to the test.
Mountain Man is not a man at all, but rather
three gifted women vocalists: Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia
Randall Meath. Together they play some of the most old school, stripped-down
folk music you’ll ever hear. And by ‘stripped-down’ I mean sometimes it has a
guitar. Often it has nothing but three voices.
If you’re going to make an album like that you
better have some vocal chops to back it up, and Mountain Man does not disappoint.
They sing with some of the most sublime harmonies you’ll ever hear. The songs are
relaxed and whimsical, and the sweetness of the three voices combined will make
you feel like you’re floating.
Despite many of the songs being a capella they
don’t lose anything for it, with the three singers coming in and out of
harmonies to create complex layers of sound. When there is a guitar, it is a
light strum or an ambling pluck so casual you might miss it if it weren’t for
the fact that there’s literally nothing else in the back of the mix.
Long-time riders will know that I am a sucker
for a beautiful vocal, and sparse production so “Magic Ship” was ready-made to impress
me and at times they did just that. “AGT” is a song built for high stepping
in Scottish heather that filled me with joy. “Baby Where You Are” has a romantic
meander to it that made me think of Simon and Garfunkel in song construction,
and the Staves for the brilliant harmonies. The guitar helps on this song as
well. It doesn’t do a lot, but the bass notes add an emotional underpinning to
the song.
In other places, the band loses me in their
virtuosity. Mountain Man are so good at what they do that sometimes it can feel
like a choral singing challenge rather than a story that needs to be told. This
is my issue, not the band’s, since it is often their clear intent to capture a passing
image with their music rather than tell any epic stories.
“Stella” is about a little girl reluctantly
coming in the house to wash her face and have dinner. It is a brilliant example
of harmony and syncopation, but I found it all a bit too domestic, even for a
folk song.
On “Underwear”, a character pines for her
mom’s t-shirt, her dad’s pants and “a chill pair of underwear”. The song
is supposed to represent a deep familial love through some comfort clothes, and
it does that well enough. However, it felt more like a writing exercise than the
natural journey you might find on a similar but better executed song (think “This
Shirt” by Mary Chapin Carpenter). In any event, ‘chill’ in either of its possible
meanings are not what I look for in underwear.
Then, right when I was about to let the album
go to a new home, it ended with a 55 second song called “Guilt” with
just the right words to bring me back on board:
“You can think about it, you
can think about it all the time
And all the ways you would
have changed what you said or did or tried
You can think about it and
be mean to your insides
And forget that you were ten
or twelve or even twenty-five
Or it can just be something
that happened that way
That makes you who you are
today, and it hurts but that's alright”
This was both a gut punch and a gentle hug all
at the same time and summed up this tight collection of songs well. Stripped to
its essence, the record charts a course that is sometimes heartfelt, sometimes
awkward, but in the end manages to find its way to something approaching grace.
Best tracks: AGT, Baby Where You Are, Stella, Slow Wake Up
Sunday Morning, Guilt
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