As we move towards the end of 2011, here’s a worthy record that we overlooked the first time around earlier this year. Lovingly pinched from Pitchfork: In a 2006 interview with Pitchfork, the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle explained why he chose Bellafea as an opening act: “I took out good bands I liked! It’s really as simple as that. I really wanted people to see Bellafea especially. I think you don’t see a stage presence like Heather McEntire’s more than a few times in your life. She’s unbelievable.”
Five years later, Bellafea’s fate is unknown– it’s unclear whether they’re on indefinite hiatus or broken up permanently– but McEntire‘s charisma comes through strong and clear in her new act, Mount Moriah, which she formed with guitarist Jenks Miller of Horseback. While Bellafea derived its sound from spartan postpunk experimentalism, Mount Moriah explores more traditional folk, country, and gospel sounds.
Those are, of course, the hallmarks of the bustling North Carolina scene– one of the most interesting and active in the country right now– but this new sound is a perfect setting for McEntire, whose voice suggests the expressiveness of Dolly Parton, the forcefulness of Carole King, and the textured restraint of Emmylou Harris.
That voice is the ideal conduit for McEntire’s lyrics– or perhaps the lyrics are the ideal vehicle for her voice. She writes in a direct style that manages to incorporate interesting turns of phrase, knotty combinations of words, and evocative imagery. ‘Social Wedding Rings’ deftly dissects circle-of-friends politics, neither lambasting nor condoning those interrelationships but finding a finer balance between fond remembrance and bitter regret.
Even singing about hanging out in Colorado Springs and listening to Buffy Sainte-Marie, she’s makes the song specific to her own experience yet sympathetic enough to apply to any listener. On ‘Lament’, McEntire slyly subverts love-song conventions to write a declaration of love’s opposite: “A mouthful of bees couldn’t stop me from whisperin’, ‘I don’t love you,’” she sings with a steeliness in her phrasing, right before the handclaps come in. Her repulsion is just as intense and wild as the attraction and excitement of first love.
Continue reading: Mount Moriah: Mount Moriah | Album Reviews | Pitchfork.
Tags: Heather McEntire, Holidays for Quince Records, Horseback, Jenks Miller, Mount Moriah, pitchfork, Stephen M. Deusner
This entry was posted on Saturday, December 24th, 2011 at 11:01 am and is filed under 2011, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
No Responses to “Album of the day: Mount Moriah – Mount Moriah”