Vancouver native Stephen McBean (Jerk With A Bomb, Ex Dead Teenager, Black Mountain) has been recording music for 25 years now but is generally unheard of in New Zealand.
This is the 3rd Pink Mountaintops album from a catalogue that also includes 2 EPs and is described by their record label Jagjaguwar, like this, “The ten songs on “Outside Love” are about or influenced by weddings in Montreal, winter, Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut, Christmas albums, that one Exile song and that one Echo and the Bunnymen song, the Bermuda Triangle, being depressed in the sunshine, people who haven’t made out yet but will in the future, The Everly Brothers, clowns in the ceilings, and bedrooms where skinheads used to live.” And that I find pretty darn accurate.
Another way would be to say this is most definitely their most fluid, listenable album yet. While the S/T album and Axis of Evol would ever so slightly jolt you from time to time (pleasurably of course), the formula has now been perfected and patented.
A family affair, this album also features guests from the likes of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Whiskeytown, Blood Meridian, Bonnie Prince Billy and of course, Black Mountain.
Standout track so far is “Holiday”. Most basic in arrangement, you can almost imagine 6 or 7 people sitting in the backyard circled around a fire, each playing their part passing a cheap bottle of wine around. This is song is carefree, beginning with one of my new most-favorite ever lyrics, “Everyone I love deserves a holiday in the sun almost every day”.
Fans of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Wil Oldham, Nick Cave and the like will find their new favorite band in the Pink Mountaintops. One record or another.
BUT why write pages upon pages about something when the captive audience can listen to it now for free? Visit www.myspace.com/pinkmountaintops and you can hear the album in its entirety right now!
Once you’ve hear it and want to purchase the album go to www.is.gd/wqJX pre-order it and get the full album as a download RIGHT NOW!!!
After that, if you’re still hungry go to http://www.hivestudios.net where you can download Ex Dead Teenager’s second album for free! They come across more like Jon Spencer’s dirty little brother playing Birthday Party songs. In New Zealand terms, I totally have a rock-fantasy line-up with these guys, Batrider & Die! Die! Die!
DIG NOW AND FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACEPIPE!
MP3: Pink Mountaintops – vampire
MP3: Pink Mountaintops – while you were dreaming
:: Evan James