The music of Mountain Movers seems like the perfect soundtrack to one of the many rainy days we've had of late here in the DMV. It's not that the tunes of this Connecticut outfit are gloomy as much as they fit a certain mood. The mood on the epic Walking After Dark album by the band is one that is ruminative and sort of restless.
I name-checked Robert Quine in an earlier album's review, and I might do it here too, but this album feels more like it owes debts to Eleventh Dream Day and Bardo Pond. Opener "Bodega on My Mind/The Sun Shines on the Moon" explores nuance and noise, with a hint of a nearly Dead-like rootlessness that's sort of boldly anachronistic. That spirit is more constrained in the brief "My Holy Shrine", a highlight here, and one which nods in the direction of Daydream Nation-era Sonic Youth for apparent inspiration. And for the considerable portions of this album which retain a certain acid rock appeal, there are suprising stretches of nearly ambient noise. "Reclamation Yard", for example, bleeds across a near-quarter-hour, with the faint pulses inside the tune placing this within the realm of drone rock.
For all the comparisons this lot may earn to Bardo Pond, it's the epic "Ice Dream" that makes them heirs to the Spacemen 3 legacy. A 20-minute journey through a dense undergrowth of noise, electronic squawking, and rhythmic humming, the track is borderline hypnotic. Mountain Movers are deconstructing their own sound on this number, simplifying even what had just come earlier on this same album. The selection is anti-music, part drone, and sort of a soundtrack to disintegration. I loved it, in other words. I hope this band tours and does this live.
Walking After Dark by Mountain Movers is out on Trouble in Mind Records.
[Photo: Ellen Goggins]