Pink Mountaintops
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Album · Alternative · 2014 · Jagjaguwar
It might be time for Steve McBean to declare Pink Mountaintops his day gig and shove Black Mountain over to the night shift. The fourth PM album has McBean showing off his love for rock ’n’ roll by playing it without compromise. If the “concept” element of this gets a tad too obvious on “Sell Your Soul,” it’s more than made up for with the natural blare of “Ambulance City,” “The Second Summer of Love,” and “Through All the Worry,” where the sounds lean toward the nasty and the loud. J Mascis, Darker My Love’s Rob Barbato, and Giant Drag’s Annie Hardy are among the party-crashers who give the album a loose, joyous, celebratory tone that can’t be faked (or scripted to happen). “New Teenage Mutilation” echoes the barroom slur of Lucinda Williams singing “Metal Firecracker,” with an extra nudge from actual cowbell that every song is allegedly in more need of. “Sixteen” distorts in a lo-fi attack that sounds like what’s really meant by "cow-punk."
Get Back
Pink Mountaintops
It might be time for Steve McBean to declare Pink Mountaintops his day gig and shove Black Mountain over to the night shift. The fourth PM album has McBean showing off his love for rock ’n’ roll by playing it without compromise. If the “concept” element of this gets a tad too obvious on “Sell Your Soul,” it’s more than made up for with the natural blare of “Ambulance City,” “The Second Summer of Love,” and “Through All the Worry,” where the sounds lean toward the nasty and the loud. J Mascis, Darker My Love’s Rob Barbato, and Giant Drag’s Annie Hardy are among the party-crashers who give the album a loose, joyous, celebratory tone that can’t be faked (or scripted to happen). “New Teenage Mutilation” echoes the barroom slur of Lucinda Williams singing “Metal Firecracker,” with an extra nudge from actual cowbell that every song is allegedly in more need of. “Sixteen” distorts in a lo-fi attack that sounds like what’s really meant by "cow-punk."
