Pink Mountaintops – Outside Love

Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love

Pink Mountaintops are the kind of band that you can pretty much guess what they sound like before hearing even a note. Apart from the fact that they’re the side project of Stephen McBean of Black Mountain (who clearly doesn’t let a good thing pass when it comes to band names) the contributors on Outside Love, the band’s third effort, have played with a veritable cornucopia of North American underground bands: A Silver Mt. Zion, The Organ, Destroyer, Sunn o))), Whiskeytown, to name just a few.

Thus when the excellently Hendrix-referencing, fuzzed-out bliss of ‘Axis: Thrones of Love’ starts the album, it seems that the other Canadian indie collective haven’t delivered much in the way of surprises. That is by no means a bad thing, since the druggy, wall-of-sound production and the sweet female vocals creating a suitably atmospheric opener, with only the recurring lyric “how deep is your love?” slightly spoiling matters, by creating an unwelcome mental image of The Bee Gees.

If the whole album had been one stoner-folk dirge, things may well have got a bit old somewhat quickly. Luckily McBean et al have a wide enough range of influences (as their related projects suggest), to create a nicely well rounded record that straddles the Americana of My Morning Jacket and the more psychedelic rock offerings of Dead Meadow, whilst exploring all the places inbetween. As with the previously alluded to Broken Social Scene, a wide variety of instrumentation is on display here: strings, lapsteel and even spaghetti western-esque whistling (on the title track) all add to the very American, blue-collar feel of the album. One can’t help but think of rough mountain men in flannel shirts driving pickup trucks, but it’s good, honest, unpretentious music and somewhat expected given the personnel involved.

What is maybe surprising, though, is how upbeat and positive much of the album is. The folkier ‘Holiday’, which features both a cheerful harmonica and a fiddle, starts with the line “everyone I love deserves a holiday’, and the delightfully-named ‘The Gayest of Sunbeams’ shows the band can be carefree whilst still rocking. The record’s most uplifting moment, though, is the gospel-tinged epic ‘And I Thank You’, on which McBean displays a rich burr reminiscent of Bill Callahan aka Smog, and which builds into a truly uplifting celebration of… something or other. Possibly God, it’s difficult to tell. The point is that there are some truly gorgeous, even happy moments here, and the album is all the richer for them.

There are a few slightly duff moments, though. In particular some of the slower, more sparse tracks don’t seem as well executed and the title track is, bizarrely, the dullest song on the whole album. But in general this is a fresh, vibrant sounding record that, like a lot of side-projects, give a band a chance to experiment with different ideas and sounds. It’s also nice to know that not everyone who takes their influences from the 60s and 70s are unimaginitive Led Zep rehashers. Outside Love is unlikely to make my albums of the year list but it makes for a surprisingly fun listening experience.

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