Vancouver's Black Mountain have won considerable acclaim from media and musicians alike; their moody, '70s-inspired dirge-rock has hit a chord with many, including the band Coldplay, who invited the group to open for them on their 2005 U.S. tour. Rather than continue down that much-heralded path, however, frontman Stephen McBean opted instead to work on his side project, Pink Mountaintops. Following the very sexy self-titled Mountaintops debut back in 2004, many expected to see a repeat of that form on this follow-up, Axis of Evol. Au contraire... as the title would suggest, this disc's focus is anything but sultry. The content within the seven songs adds up to 34 contemplative minutes of music with recurring references to Jesus, the Devil, death, war, and gospel songs. Sonically, McBean never attempts to emulate anyone, yet his languid musical manner has desperate, dark qualities shared by musicians from Neil Young to Black Sabbath to Smog. Continuing the comparisons, "New Drug Queens" has a PJ Harvey presence, while "Plastic Man, You're the Devil" will transport the listener straight into a Vietnam war movie flashback. The CD opener, "Comas," is a gorgeous, whisper-soft melody that echoes Bonnie "Prince" Billy's minimalist fare, while the bass-heavy "Cold Criminals" follows, a fan-pleaser that is the closest thing to a Black Mountain song that exists on the CD. Although this isn't the masterpiece that the self-titled Black Mountain disc was, it certainly gives devotees lots more music to listen to until their next disc comes around. --Denise Sheppard
Review by Greg Prato
Lo-fi indie rock is alive and well in 2006, as evidenced by the arrival of the sophomore effort by Pink Mountaintops, Axis of Evol. Stephen McBean returns once more with a set of tracks that sound akin to an amalgamation of John Frusciante's early solo work and the great Skip Spence. McBean certainly has a thing for psychedelic sounds -- it's hard not to listen to "Slaves" and not feel like you're about to start hallucinating yourself, while "Cold Criminals" brings to mind the Velvet Underground. But it's not a retro sound that Pink Mountaintops specialize in entirely, as evidenced by the electro beats on "Lord Let Us Shine," and the Sonic Youth-like guitar strumming on "New Drug Queens." And you can't get more minimalist and melancholy than on both the album opening and closing tracks, "Comas" and "How We Can Get Free," respectively. It's good to see that there are still artists out there who march to the beat of their own drummer, and could care less about penning songs in hopes of landing a beer commercial. And for that, you are certainly applauded, Mr. McBean.
Pink Mountaintops
Axis of Evol
[Jagjaguwar; 2006]
Rating: 8.1
Pink Mountaintops is of course the summer home of Steve McBean, who helms the lite-psychedelic-sludge outfit Black Mountain and who oozed Francophilic dread throughout late-90s Canada atop the stark Jerk With a Bomb. Initially, the seven tracks on his new record seem to play like fugitives from disparate orphanages, each with its own ambitions and sense of style. But they are linked by, of all things, an evangelical urgency: McBean self-consciously blends Satan-fearing Louvin Brothers sentiments with the Velvet Underground's narco-messianism and heavy doses of the 1970s California Jesus Movement's rhetoric/vibe.
The bible-fondling is a feint, though (I think), an allusive backdrop against which McBean worries about contemporary political turmoil. Take "Comas", for example: McBean's catalog is on a pace to out-reference Dan Bejar's, and here he rejects AC/DC's mantra outright: "No, I'm not headed down a highway to hell." War-and-peace imagery follows, but the chorus surrenders to la-la scatting. Some message is being telegraphed: the horny first Pink Mountaintops EP never sat around strumming Banhart's guitar, engineering the fingertip-slides as loudly as the vocals. Either we have a new babysitter, or the old one has been mellowed by 24-hour news and feels guilty about his slutty past.
During "Cold Criminals", a beep, like the ones on old storybook-record combos that signaled a page-turn, re-begins the riff. The bass is Black Mountain funk, and the guitar is VU-slop, but an effect sounds like planes taking off. Is this more than the requisite Smog shout-out (see Callahan's "Ex-Con", and note how the last Pink Mountaintops' "Tourist In Your Town" seemed to wink at "I Was A Stranger")? Is Halliburton or Enron in McBean's sights? Is the refrain, "Devil got us in his plans," a rebuff to fundamentalist conservative broadcaster/prognosticators such as the Van Impes, who cast us (North Americans) as the heroes in an apocalyptic fantasia?
"New Drug Queens": Okay, the chorus is "Tell your Mama don't stay out late tonight," which seems to be shushing the Scissor Sisters, or appropriating Glenn Danzig's famous maternal taunt. "Slaves" follows, and McBean sounds like he's trying to talk PJ Harvey out of hanging out in the desert with that Stone Age guy. It's nine minutes of hurdy-gurdy spiral-tribal hokey-pokey propulsion, maybe the redawn of threat-gospel. "Plastic Man, You're The Devil": As if cast in an indie-tastic homage to Trading Places, Mr. Lif the agitprop rapper has recently dropped a nasty sex rhyme, and the formerly smutty Pink Mountaintops have recorded a progressive ballad? McBean is either inserting a comic book character into the Freudian drama between God, Mary, and Jesus, or if he's using plasticity the way Devo did, as shorthand for the high-and-tight corporate/government un-man. By the end of the tune, the speaker's pacifism has waned into vigilante pragmatism.
"Lord Let Us Shine" is a choir number, but it drops fuzzed-out bar-anthem guitar over minimalist drum-machinery; imagine a Polyphonic Spree clown-carjacked by Andrew WK. Things get all Jason Spaceman by the end (remember that he went stoner-churchy too), and the lyrics cop the Stones for the zillionth time, typecasting them again as the arbiters of the 60s demonic majesty. "How We Can Get Free" asks Jesus if he even believes anymore, begging him for a liberating "holy rage." Blood spills, and McBean repeats more lines from jukebox classics, but the acoustic plod is undercut by an icy Xiu Xiu synth hit. Listening to the song is not unlike having your neck shaved by a The Deer Hunter-era Christopher Walken in a priest outfit.
I surrender: I want to type about Axis of Evol until Armageddon, but my flesh is weak. This EP contains more interesting complications than I am capable of harnessing by deadline; I feel like McBean is going to show up at the Pitchfork office as a reaping angel, and I won't be ready, and there won't be time to repent. What are these songs about partying, warfare, and holiness trying to do? Is McBean envisioning a neu-hippie version of Left Behind? Is he speaking in tongues with his tongue in his cheek? Most importantly, how and why is this piledrivingly unsubtle delivery of bleak Dylanesque cosmology so hott? In his book American Jesus, Stephen Prothero details how one of the "dangerous directions" of the Jesus Movement was toward "Flirty Fishing," or using "sex as a recruiting technique" for the Lord. Consider me seduced.
-William Bowers, March 17, 2006
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