Skip to content
DVDfever.co.uk – Pink Mountaintops: Outside Love CD reviewElly Roberts reviews
Jagjaguwar Records
- Released: May 2009
- Rating: 10/10+
- Vote and comment on this album:View Comments
Ten songs of love and hate. Its a whopper.
Pink Mountaintops is Stephen McBeans 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. Theres quite a bit of angst going on here too (love eh?), so dont expect it to be all wine and roses.
Musically McBean gives a huge nod to Spectors 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 dont be fooled by the sweetness and light of the beautiful music, because its quite blood thirsty stuff, with Satan at work maybe? You can suck out the blood / But you cant kill the heart. Nasty Satan. Theres 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 Obersts 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.
The verdict A definite, must have.
Weblinks for music samples and more:pinkmountaintops.com /myspace.com/pinkmountaintops
The full list of tracks included are :
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 HeavenView the discussion thread.blog comments powered by Disqus= 0) {query += ‘url’ + i + ‘=’ + encodeURIComponent(links[i].href) + ‘&’;}}document.write(”);})();//]]]]>]]>
Elly Roberts passed away in 2011, but he was a man who was so passionate about all types of music and loved meeting his musical heroes, such as Mick Hucknall at a book signing at the Trafford Centre, Manchester in 2007.
A former teacher and also a music journalist, DJ and radio presenter on local community station Calon FM, plus appearances on BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru and BBC Radio 2, Elly started doing reviews for DVDfever.co.uk in 2004 and he did the majority of the CD and concerts reviews on the website.
I know also that he loved getting away for the summer to Spain and I hope that wherever he is now he is enjoying the hot sunshine and, as one of his friends has said on his Facebook page, that he is interviewing his musical heroes.