[img][200:200]http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0006SNKTY.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg[/img]

Just bought this, made it through the initial listen, and I'm totally diggin' it. This is the band that used to be Jerk With A Bomb, and it takes the JWAB folk/punk/drone thing and adds a little Sabbath, a little Stones, and a whole lotta VU. It's similar to their Pink Mountaintops side project, but darker and larger in scale.

Where's the Obner love?

Yeah, I've been wanting to hear that too. Another Canadian band that's been digging through my record collection. Read something awhile back that said the "debut is a hazy, drugged-out trip through all the best parts of The Talking Heads’ quirky art pop, Led Zeppelin’s riff-heavy classic rock and the gloriously melancholic moments of Neil Young And Crazy Horse." Man, if it's even half as good as that description then I'm gonna be loving it for sure. How's the singer?

I really want to hear this, but, alas, I'm trying to hold out on new releases till I get some of the essential albums bought...which means I may not be buying but a handful of 2005 releases this year.

For me, Stephen McBean's vocals are the strongpoint of the band. He sings in this oddly soulful, lazy drawl that's just perfect for this stuff. There's a little Neil Young in there for sure.

Even though I agree partially with that description you quoted (ie: it's definitely a mix of "quirky art pop", "riff-heavy classic rock", and the "melancholic moments of NY and Crazy Horse"), I don't hear a speck of Talking Heads or Zeppelin. Each song seems like a slightly different concoction of antecedents - "No Satisfaction" mixes VU with the Stones, and the epic "Druganaut" mixes Black Sabbath with Krautrock and Crazy Horse. It's gonna take a few more spins for me to fully get this.

LOVE IT.

I downloaded it a few weeks ago and gave it one listen. I liked it, but it didn't really grab me. I'll have to try it again soon.

Radcliffe,
I'm adding that to my to buy list after hearing "Druganaut" last night.

Thanks to this and another thread on another board, I picked this up, and was quite impressed -- very nice. I think they "hippy days of yore" comparison I heard was a bit much, but I have to admit, it's more so than most contemporary ear fodder.

Melikes! Three thumbs up.

This interests me. Can I getta RIYL?

RIYL: '70s riff rock, mellow psychedelia, '00s indie, digressions, tangents, Television, beards, Neil Young, acid, mescaline, unwashed denim, and rain.

Oh. The only of those I don't like is mescaline, but only because I've never tried it. Now, if these guys are related to The Pink Mountaintops, why will I like the Black when I was repelled by the Pink in performance last summer?

RIYL: the Pink Mountaintops.

It's the same band, doing pretty much the same thing except with bigger riffs. If you were repelled by Pink, you'll be equally repelled by Black.

Mescaline is sweet. I dropped it while single-track mountain biking and it was awesome. It's like acid, except you retain a realistic depth of field.

Which makes single-track mountain biking a feasible thing to do under the influence. I skied alone on ecstacy at Blackcomb once. That was kinda silly.

Exactly. It was a total blast. Ranks up there with the time I dropped acid while being the trapeze guy on a Hobie Cat in gale force winds. Now that was a good, wholesome fun drug experience - at least until we snapped one of the rudders in half.

I went to their show last week, Radcliffe. It was pretty good. I definitely love the album, or at least most of it. I think I prefer the Pink, though. The songs have a little more bounce and less sludge. Plus, when I saw the Pink Mtntps last summer at the Anza it was the best show I saw last year, probably because it casual aka ramshackle, train derailling. Last Thursdays BM performance was pretty tight and professional save for one 15 minute feedback squelch fest.

ANYWAY, it's good to see local bands get so much good press. Here's hoping they can keep the train from comin' off the track.

I'm having trouble stealing this. SLSK not giving.

me likey all that is BLUE MOUNTAIN. Black Mountain = DK
but if Roy likes it.....

I've got it. but you have to pay for a concert ticket if they come through yer town.

username - ifihadahifi

Much grass.

If they come through my town. Yeah, right.

I'm a year late to this oarty, after digging No Satisfactio forever.

This is gonna go straight to the top of my most played.

I picked this up last year. Track 2 is great but the rest of it is...umm...not as good, shall we say.

pink mountaintops' "axis of evol" came out today, i think...

I knew you were gonna like it. Odd thing is Pink Mountaintops didn't really grab me.

my record of the year for 2005.

picking up PINK MOUNTAINTOPS tonight


PINK MOUNTAINTOPS
Axis of Evol CD / LP (JAG083, released: 03/07/06)
If you measure every human act or expression as some manifestation of our hard-wired propensity to have sex, survive and spread our genetic junk around, you could be labeled a darwinist. And they seemingly come in all sizes and shapes: economic and literary darwinists, evolutionary psychologists and biologists, and, paradoxically, creationist-leaning conservatives, to name a few. Unwittingly, then, those kind rock journalists out there who have summed up the music of Pink Mountaintops as being all about sex have fallen into the same age-old trap of oversimplification (for which we are partially to blame). The desire is for everything to be in a neat little box, much like the variously-configured darwinists out there would prefer that everything we do be explained by just one simple and powerful idea. But what is real and true in the world does not work like that, we humbly believe. Yeah, you may express, with a wink, that you know what the "pink mountaintops" are all about. Perhaps you can fuck them, both literally and figuratively. But we'd maintain that you can't put your hands around these mountaintops. No, because these mountaintops are unreachable. You can't measure them. You can't know them or neatly dissect them. You can't possess them. All you can do is look at them. And, hopefully, having gazed on them, you'll come to the realization that you can think about them in more than one way.

Pink Mountaintops is Stephen McBean (and also many of his friends when the full band is assembled to play live). McBean has been in numerous groups over the last two decades. As a thirteen-year old, he played in a band called Jerk Ward, playing hardcore influenced by the Neos, Discharge, Crucifix and whoever else was fast or the fastest. His other bands to date have been a straight out punk outfit, a crusty punk/metal band, and, most recently, a psych-tinged maximal rock group whose self-titled debut record, Black Mountain, captured a great amount of critical acclaim (and meteorically became Jagjaguwar's best-selling title.) With Axis of Evol, Pink Mountaintops' second full-length record, McBean has once again created something much greater than the sum of his influences. Axis of Evol begins with a forboding spiritual called "Comas", the kind that McBean and only a very few other songwriters of this generation could pull off. It includes the tone-setting lyrical phrase "I have been wrestling a dead angry deer, and she is still with me after all of these years'. The record then almost immediately ramps up into a thumping, buzzing, blissful haze, at various parts sounding like the Velvet Underground or Spacemen 3 or the Jesus and Mary Chain circa Psycho Candy. And at the end, the album then segues into a hypnotic, Smog-like meditation called "How We Can Get Free". Throughout the record, McBean sings about love and war, the love of war, and the war of love -- on the body, on the mind and on the soul. Home-recorded and largely self-produced, Axis of Evol is a further testament to the vital prolificacy of Stephen McBean. His mind, body and soul have once again created something that can't be simply measured, coded or decoded. Experience it, then think about it in more than one way.