self-titled - no. 1 - (Page 53)

third LPs; McBean’s Pink Mountaintops released two 7-inches and its second LP; Schmidt’s Sinoia Caves re-released The Enchanter Persuaded, a seven-track ambient record from 2002 originally issued in a small batch. All of this was possible for two reasons: First, after its tours, Black Mountain took a year off as a band. The band members planned on sitting still after the middle of the year until Coldplay came calling. Afterward, everyone needed a break. “You can always tell when it’s time to do something different,” says McBean. “We don’t want to put out records for the convenience of selling records.” But everyone immediately started making music again with other bands, and that’s just a symptom of the second reason, or what Webber calls the “almost incestuous” Vancouver scene. Much of the press behind the band’s debut referred to Black Mountain as the flagship act of the Black Mountain Army, a collective of Vancouver musicians living and working together in commune fashion. The band has played down those reports as exaggerated, saying too much significance was given to a domain name that just happened to be available (www.blackmountainarmy. com) and to black patches they printed with those words for the crowd at a Vancouver show. But the ties are certainly tight in the city, says Webber. Everyone in this pool of bands has likely lived together, worked together, shared concert bills, records andbar space. Lightning Dust was meant, in part, as a challenge, but Camirand adds that all of these bands—including Black Mountain—represent friendships among people with wide, intersecting tastes and abilities that simply want to make something new. “The other bands are a product of hanging out with the friends you want to hang out with at the time,” Camirand says. “So when me and Josh and whoever get together and jam, it’s just more a reflection of our friendship. When Black Mountain gets together and does what they do, it’s more a reflection of our friendship.” Eventually it was time for those friends to make the nextrecord. McBean describes a loose plan when Black Mountain reconvened in 2006—to make the second record their first as a real band. They had tested several new songs on the road in 2005 and had many demos. The first set of rehearsals was fine, but, as Camirand puts it, “We had a bunch of songs and pieces, but it didn’t feel like \we had a record.” They took another break, reconvened and sketched out another nine songs in five days. They were ready. It took just two sessions in two studios to finish the album, and six of In The Future’s 10 tracks were recorded in a 1-day stay in Vancouver’s The Hive. The band members slept in the studio and barely showered. Webber says everyone was remarkably focused, and she was impressed anew by her bandmates’ skills. Five songwriters comfortable with their own compositions presented, tested, stretched and re-examined every idea in the studio, treating the sketches—such as the acoustic demo McBean brought in for “Wucan”—with ground-up imagination. “A lot of the stuff in this band comes together in the studio,” says Wells. “It’s been really fun to have a sketch of a song where you can’t see the finished vision until you get in the studio and start tinkering around with stuff. It feels like you’ve really built something.” Wells says there wasn’t much pressure (“If there was, we didn’t listen”), and McBean, in his casual tone, adds that the studio is just for trying things and hanging out. The band members are so open to change that, for both LPs, they excised centerpiece tracks justbecause they knew they could do better. “Tyrants”—In The Future’s booming, eight-minute lead single—was cut from Black Mountain because they knew it could be improved. Sure enough, Schmidt is integral on the In the Future take, alternately adding a superhero thrust or wintry gaze. And this time around, the title track just wasn’t ready for the record. They’ll figure out its particulars on tour. “A year down the road, after you’ve played that song a hundred times, it could either be way better, or it could have completely lost the spirit, so it’s a bit of a gamble,” explains McBean. “But ‘In the Future,’ I think, is one that when we record it again after we play it live a bunch is just going to ” Camirand, sharing a couch with McBean, finishes the thought. “It’s just clarity,” Camirand adds. “If you have the balls to let it go, that’s cool. Then one day down the road, something will just click, and it’ll be done.” In the Future is the sort of build, battle and burn record that makes fading guitar heroes—Black Sabbath, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Spacemen 3 and a horde of other psyche- and stoner-rock bands—sound like titans again. In fact, dozens of other young rock and metal bands draw from similar pools of influence, but Black Mountain has the farthest reach and the most finessed grip. “Tyrants” opens like a metal symphony before it crouches like a stricken beast, and “Stormy High” hammers a riff with a vindictive rhythm and a triumphant hook. The extracurricular activities and constant self-push has undoubtedly paid off. Black Mountain felt more like a sketchpad, full of doodles drawn from memory and wishes for the next trip. In the Future feels like an epic moving picture, with big builds, fast comedowns, slow burns and cathedral structures. Wells hits hard and smart, his heaviest beats counterbalanced by nuances and textures. Camirand’s bass lines hang long and low, a welcome, obstinate contrast to the constant motion of McBean’s precise chords. And Webber, who helped push Jerk With a Bomb into this righteous new ground just four years ago, trades verses with and lends harmonies to McBean’s words. She wrote the closing track and takes two songs for herself. Her icy, tightly vibrato vocals on “Queens Will Play” send a bolt of sincerity through the spine of the sinister lyrics: “Blood crawls up and hassles / Blood sprawls across the walls.” And it’s Schmidt—layering three contrasting keyboard lines around Webber’s voice—that acts as the springboard for her best performance and one of McBean’s best solos. It’s the sort of grand moment on a next-step record that makes you wonder what all the fuss was about the first time around with the old Black Mountain. 53

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of self-titled - no. 1

self-titled - no. 1 Contents Spiritualized No Age Les Savy Fav The Teenagers Booka Shade Michael Gira Ellen Allien Magik Markers Jens Lekman Yeasayer Daptone Records Tipping Point Boris Fiery Furnaces Black Dice Black Mountain The Black Lips

self-titled - no. 1

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.