You can't really look at Stephen McBean and think, 'nope, that guy doesn't spend his time crafting intense stoner rock.' In the last two or three years, McBean's alpine-oriented groups, Black Mountain and The Pink Mountaintops, have come into their own as purveyors of fuzzed-out stoner rock that achieves the rare quality of transcending genres and eras of rock n roll to drink straight from the aether of rock music's purest essence.
The Pink Mountaintops' new album Outside Love, (on Jagujaguwar, 5/5/09) is a perfect example of McBean's ability to achieve stylistic drunkeness by taking musical sips from everything behind the bar. The Pink Mountaintops evoke moments of blurry-eyed psychedelic brit-pop, syrupy sweet indie, and a hint of country ala Neil Young circa Harvest.
On the opening track, "Axis: Thrones of Love" (a nod to Hendrix's Bold as Love?), the Mountaintops jump in sounding like classic U2 played at half-speed. Poppy, fuzzed-out grinding rock n roll. And although the album touches on a variety of styles and tempos, the thread that ties everything together is actually a rope of fat, dirty guitar and bass tones topped with cool, collected lyrics.
Axis: Thrones Of Love - Pink Mountaintops
One of the nice things about Outside Love is that McBean leads the group into some serious rock, but they don't take themselves too seriously. There is a smug sense of humor behind it all, evident in song titles like "The Gayest of Sunbeams." Even with a title that evokes sensitive, smarmy acoustic guitars and crooning, the song is introduced by a fuzzy bass line that segues into some serious power-pop. "The Gayest of Sunbeams" is an essential addition to summer road trip mixtapes everywhere this year.
The Gayest Of Sunbeams - Pink Mountaintops
Well-written review, I'm just now beginning to put together my summer jams for tooling around. Keep 'em coming.
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