Black Mountain / Wolf People
Black Mountain is a Canadian rock band led by Stephen McBean. The band is an amalgamation of the Classic Rock / Blues Rock of Neil Young, Buffalo Springfield, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath with some psychedelic tendencies.
Leader Stephen McBean also heads another similarly-named band, Pink Mountaintops, who are the more experimental side of McBean’s musical abilities. Black Mountain is the front line band for Black Mountain Army. By day, McBean works in a needle-exchange facility for drug addicts, near Vancouver’s infamous Main & Hastings intersection, widely considered to be the heroin capital of Canada, if not North America.
Matt Camirand and Joshua Wells are also in Blood Meridian.
Support comes from Black Mountain’s labelmates WOLF PEOPLE – the first British band to sign to Jagjaguwar who will release their first album proper on October 11.
Steeple represents the emergence of a fully fledged band from the fragmented, haunted bedroom meanderings of their Tidings singles compilation, released earlier this year. Recorded in a converted chicken barn on the grounds of a 17th century Welsh mansion, Steeple takes on a heavier sound while maintaining the arabesque electric guitars, groove-laden drums and ethereal vocals that characterised its predecessor.
Cheerfully aware of the English rock band cliché of “getting it together in the country,” the quartet did it anyway, inspired by the rural isolation of West Wales to conjure shifting rhythms, entrancing folksong and smoke-fogged, riff-stoked jams. From the stuttered, flute-led earworm hook of “Tiny Circle” to the churning, twisted ball of metal that is “One By One From Dorney Reach,”Steeple sounds as massive as the setting in which it was laid to tape and is full of the nuggets that many a rock fan spend lifetimes among crates in search of.
Steeple captures a band in metamorphosis, bridging frontman Jack Sharp’s earlier solo efforts and the speaker-shearing attack developed in concert over the past four years. Now an accomplished live unit, Wolf People have shared stages with the likes of The Besnard Lakes, Dinosaur Jr, Dungen, Endless Boogie, Lightning Dust and Tinariwen.
Proud of their heritage, both musical and cultural, Wolf People’s vision faithfully reflects the myriad environments the group’s members move between — the British countryside and various urban centres (Bedford, London and North Yorkshire) — while offering a universally appreciable set of songs for this age or any other.
Wolf People released their vinyl/digital singles compilation Tidings this February, info here:
http://www.jagjaguwar.com/onesheet.php?cat=JAG158lp
And their debut album proper Steeple is due out October 11 on CD/LP/Digital formats:
http://www.jagjaguwar.com/onesheet.php?cat=JAG159
