efrim menuck – guitar, piano, vocals, tapes, effects
thierry amar – contrabass, vocals
sophie trudeau – violin, vocals
jessica moss - violin, vocals
dave payant - drums, keyboards, vocals
adam kinner - saxophone
jason sharp - saxophone
matana roberts - saxophone
gordon allen - trumpet
howard bilerman - production
jem cohen - artwork
1) there is a light
2) i built myself a metal bird
3) i fed my metal bird the wings of other metal birds
4) kollapz tradixional (thee olde dirty flag)
5) collapse traditional (for darling)
6) kollaps tradicional (bury 3 dynamos)
7) 'piphany rambler
should have been an ep
i found the middle part of this disc to be interesting but the first and last tracks to be very self-indulgent. that produces a decent ep in the middle. this record will be available for full review in mid 2015.
well, it's official: mt. zion are now an alternative rock band. i'm sure a lot of people think that's really good. i'm sure a lot of people think that's really bad. i'm absolutely certain that most people familiar with the act are somewhere in between these two simplistic extremes. also, for those paying attention, it appears to be that the tra-la-la band consisted of ian ilavsky and beckie foon and drummers are not given any status; this is the general convention in rock music. perhaps the tra-la-la band is working on a solo record - hopefully with choir.
personally, i'm not shy about my fondness of alternative rock at all. however, this was always an act that i was interested in primarily because it was a little bit different than the bulk of my cd collection, and was doing something rather unique. now, i'm not trying to set the disc up for a fall; it goes over enough unique ground to be interesting, but there is also very clearly an attempt to be a little bit more conventional. when you start off with something unconventional and want it to be more conventional, you're collapsing what is traditional relative to what you had. it's really not confusing at all.
despite the partitioning, the disc really consists of four tracks: 1, 2/3, 4/5/6 and 7. the transitions do represent pauses in the greater tracks, so don't expect them to run into each other. still, they are conceptually tied and even contain shared passages. there is a new, slightly more aggressive drummer in the band and this has integrated a bit more muscle to the sound through large portions of the disc.
pitchfork tried to describe the first track as a strawman. i think they missed the point; the first track strikes me as more of an explanation, not just of this disc but perhaps of the next several. the liner notes explain that it's dedicated to the youngest member of the orchestra, who is much, much too young to play an instrument, except perhaps a rattle. consciously or not, there's now a new level of responsibility worked into the songwriting process; these songs must go somewhere, and these units must move. i'm not going to slam the track because i might get something thrown at me the next time i see them play (not really). it's an honest track dedicated to a young child and if you think you might relate to such a thing, you probably will. i just don't, it's just not really my thing and i'm going to review the record as though it starts with the second track.
the second track, which includes the third track, remember?, has plenty of teases of godspeed-like passages worked into an epic rock song structure, split into two digestible six minute chunks. it's best described using the word "grunge", but in a strange sort of way, with a strong influence from early 80's downtown new york city; think branca, think swans. i'm going to guess that a passage in the middle was removed and that this passage represents the place where the track splits because the second half of the track sounds like the climax at the end of a long ambient portion and the first track ends right when it sounds like it should have entered a long ambient portion. relative to the back catalogue, that's an unconventional songwriting decision. does it work? well, it shortens things up substantially and gets to the point a little bit sooner. however, it sort of deprives the build of the preceding lull. if the intent was to mess with me, and it could well have been, and i don't mean me, personally, then it worked, but i'm not sure that the effect comes off as effectively as it would have otherwise. if we're going to treat this like alt. rock then the string (viola and viola) parts act as analogs to guitar licks and solos; the harmonics are not dissimilar in the sense that they cut through the grungey riffs in a comparable way. ultimately, this track strikes me as a template in the sense that the first half is actually almost even radio friendly, which is not something i could say about anything else i've ever heard from them. i could even, remarkably, conceive of it going over well at "alternative rock night" at your local bar; a shot or two in you, and you could be dancing to it under flashing lights and a haze of artificial smoke. indeed, we are instructed to dance, and if you want to look into that, you probably want to think of emma goldman.
the next track, tracks 4/5/6, slows the disc down considerably. i'm once again hearing substantial teases of godspeed under the mix, but this one draws more upon the spaced, ambient aspect of that act, once again splicing it with elements of epic, psychedelic and even progressive rock. typical words that are used to describe this would be "mournful" (track 4, an obituary of some sort, to a protester? a soldier? a civilian? a young student?), "contemplative" (the whole thing) and "psychedelic" (track 6, which reads off naively as being about the passion, but could just as easily be a sardonic commentary on obama's lincoln fetish, which is perhaps more consistent with the first half), but i'm actually, for the sixth, reminded more of some kind of large festival c. 1970 full of baked and tripping young people stumbling around every which way, maybe followed by some kind of unfortunate catastrophe (the end is quite dissonant). as before, the track is split into two six minute chunks, with the fifth being a short bridge between the two.
i'm not going to ramble about that last track. :P. it could be described as "chamber blues".
overall, this is something rather different, but it's glued together quite coherently and i've found it enjoyable, albeit on a very different level. i'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the act is in the process of pivoting, that they may move rather quickly once they've jumped tracks and that it may not be in their best interests to look back as they're roaring, full steam, ahead.