Walking After Dark

TROUBLE IN MINDから"MOUNTAIN MOVERS"の9枚目のアルバムとなる『WALKING AFTER DARK』がリリース!

叙情的な魅力が光る作曲と長編即興ジャムという、"MOUNTAIN MOVERS"の最大の長所である両方の側面が色濃く反映され制作された本作。ロックダウンのダウンタイムを利用して練習スペースで録音されたジャムがアルバムの下地となっており、音色からはメンバー達がジャムの中で作り出した唯一無二の奇想天外なビートとグルーヴの唸り声が循環し、立体的に浮かび上がるスタジオの空気感をこれでもかという程感じることが可能。とにかく聴きごたえのある満足感の高いアルバムへと仕上がっております。

シンセサイザー/ドラムマシーン/オートハープ/パーカッション(その他、その辺に転がっているもの)、そして伝統的なギター/ベース/ドラムという様々な楽器が折を成す楽曲達は、メジャーシーンでは中々お目にかかることのできない一風変わったアーティスティック性が込められたアルバムです。

Over a run of albums that began with 2015s Death Magic, New Haven, Connecticut band Mountain Movers have grown more and more into a sound thats somehow simultaneously free-floating psychedelia and thoughtfully composed songwriting. Theyve experimented with different balances and shadings of these two sides of their musical identity, and on Walking After Dark, Mountain Movers split the difference right down the middle, presenting a double album thats half bleary observational songs and half jam excerpts. While theres no overtly stated connection between the songs and the album title, Walking After Dark is most definitely a late-night album. On lyrical tunes like "My Holy Shrine" or "Bodega on My Mind," vocalist/guitarist Dan Greene describes nocturnal street scenes of gas station squabbles and bus stop small talk as the band meditates on spare, two-chord cycles. Instead of the traditional drum kit, the majority of the rhythms are played quietly on hand percussion, making space for Kryssi Battalenes transcendent guitar leads to co-narrate. This soft and shadowy approach recalls some of the best similarly sleepless albums ever made. "In the Desert, In the Flood" has the same shimmering longing as the Velvet Undergrounds third album, and the stumbling flow of bongos and wobbly guitars on "We Are All Flowers" is somewhere between Neil Youngs On the Beach and Yo La Tengos most tenderly whispered tunes. Theres fuzz and weirdness at times, but never in a way that overtakes the pervasive quiet. Even lengthy, unrestricted synth jams like "Factory Dream" or the 14-minute "Reclamation Yard" are subdued, recalling the same still beauty of Windy + Carl or Darla Records late-90s cross-hatchings of guitar pop and ambient electronics. The key magic of Walking After Dark is its fluidity, and the ease with which the players fade in and out of structure, modes of expression, and even their individual roles within a single song. They were already locked solidly into a collective sound that followed in the footsteps of communal noise rockers like Trad, Gras Och Stenar, Bardo Pond, or Ghost, but on the nine winding paths of sound that make up Walking After Dark, Mountain Movers become a fully conjoined organism moving in weary unison. With this album, the band have accomplished the rare feat of making music that sounds exactly like what it feels like to stay up all night. The approach is dialed back and restrained on both the lingering songs of glassy-eyed musings and the dawn-hued improvisations, and the Mountain Movers masterfully shape the album into a 73-minute listening experience that flashes by like a slideshow of fleeting thoughts projected from a sleep-deprived brain. ~ Fred Thomas