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Pink Mountaintops is Stephen McBean’s new 18 member collective, though many of them already exist in his other Vancouver outfit Black Mountain.
The CD cover shows the cover of an imaginary book resting on a velvet drape. Inside this book are tales of love and hate, but not ones we might normally associate with romance. There’s quite a bit of angst going on here too (love eh?), so don’t expect it to be all wine and roses.
Musically McBean gives a huge nod to Spector’s wall of sound, or even a Jim Steinman production, which opens this thriller on Axis : Thrones Of Love, a menacing yet sweet power ballad drenched by female singers that hang above the heavy and slow pulses.
A similar approach is deployed on the beat-heavy Execution with twanging guitars and tinkling piano superbly dressing this audio monster, and potential single methinks.
Things get a lot more stripped back for the gorgeous ballad While We Were Sleeping, featuring a divine vocal by one of the many females involved. This sombre sounding, but contradictory sweet tale reveals the many emotions of being tortured by love.
Changing tack, Vampire has more of a country-Celtic feel than any other song, though don’t be fooled by the sweetness and light of the beautiful music, because it’s quite blood thirsty stuff, with Satan at work maybe? – “You can suck out the blood / But you can’t kill the heart.” Nasty Satan. There’s a similar Celtic template to the hippy feelgood factor of Holiday, one which you might find on early Waterboys albums.
Plodding Come On has a joyous Polyphonic Spree flourish about it with all manner of instrumentation clanging in a ‘Summer Of Love’ spirit, whereas the brooding organ work of Outside Love draws on Pink Floyd spaceiness that would slot nicely somewhere into Dark Side Of The Moon.
Celebratory And I Thank You has clever wisps of Conor Oberst’s country twiddling, a happy –go- luck chorus, pedal steel guitar, and a vocal twang supreme by Mc. Bean that adds to its freewheeling nature.
The only misfit is dirty rocker The Gayest Of Sunbeams, sounding like some Velvet Underground throw-away from the 60s.
Finally, McBean successfully combines a gentle version of the ‘wall of sound’ with his acidic lyrics on Closer To Heaven, closing a brilliant album, even if it has many dark and uneasy lyrical moments.
Best track? – While We Were Dreaming – no competition.
1. Axis : Thrones Of Love
2. Execution
3. While We Were Dreaming
4. Vampire
5. Holiday
6. Come Down
7. Outside Love
8. And I Thank You
9. The Gayest Of Sunbeams
10. Closer To Heaven
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Review & concert pics copyright © Elly Roberts, 2004-2010.