Thee Silver Mountain Reveries - The "Pretty Little Lightning Paw" E.P. download mp3 flac

ok...so NOW they go and sell out, after they already turned off all of the suits and poseurs by releasing a 4-track hour long mess of paranoid ramblings and epic masterpieces, when they were looking for something to market. they give them something to market and it's too late, broken social scene already sold 8 zillion records.

darn.

this isn't that bad, actually. it's four messy attempts at more conventional song structures but it's not as blatantly corporate as, well, the broken social scene were. the timing was only partly to blame; if this is an attempt to sell out, the boys and girls in mt. zion should get used to perpetual obscurity.

the first track is more punk rock oriented, almost a do make track. it builds in a similar manner to much of their stuff in that it starts off on the extremes of the musical spectrum and brings in the middle slowly. certainly much more commercial than usual, but it lacks any punch other than the eyebrow raising conclusion: this sounds like do make say think. no comment on the screaming at the beginning.

it's been obvious for some time now that efrim's two favorite singers are michael gira and robert smith. the second track is called microphones in the trees, but it sounds like it was recorded in a submarine; the compression on the track is almost disorienting. it builds rather ambiently, drawing on both of these influences very heavily; we can describe this as psychedelic pop.

the third track jumps more into some kind of dubby trip-hop, mismashed with choral vocals and a lot of background sound effects. it sounds a little like a collaboration between brian eno, robert fripp and thom yorke.

with number four, we end up with a psychedelic kind of country. this is my favourite track on here. i hesitate to call this freak folk, although that was probably the idea. i don't want to go that way because the influence here is unquestionably johnny cash. "so, the kids like trippy folk? let's do some wacked out cash kinda thing.". i make no other comment other than that they really accomplish exactly what they set out to do. i could see this being a huge hit in the gaming community if there is a video game where a good five or six minutes are to be spent in a recovery state.

so....a couple of low-key ambient pop songs is what we have here. while it's not the kind of thing i'm personally really into, they are all well written and largely enjoyable. i would recommend this as a starting point as it is their most accessible record. the only thing you would need to watch out for is that it is largely not indicative of their overall sound.