Pink Mountaintops
w/Yellow Dancer and the Cinch
Sat Dec 4, Fun House, 9:30 pm, $5.
Occasionally a band comes along that’s so derivative yet so winning with it, you drop your reservations and succumb to their tune-pilfering charms. Exhibit X: the Pink Mountaintops.
Led by bearded Vancouver libertine Stephen McBean (Jerk with a Bomb, Black Mountain), Pink Mountaintops will push many familiar buttons in those steeped in music history. But even if you’re ignorant of the rock canon, the Pink Mountaintops’ self-titled 2004 debut disc (Jagjaguwar) will likely strike a deep chord–especially if you dig songs about sex.
Album opener “Bad Boogie Ballin'” sounds like a ZZ Top title and features McBean’s perfect Billy Gibbons “ow”s to boot. But its chintzy drum-machine beat, shaky hurdy-gurdy drones, and bass riff from Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” actually sound more like a new wave odd ditty sung by an unselfconscious white soul vocalist. The hilariously titled “Rock’n’Roll Fantasy” is a surprisingly lilting, languid soul ballad buttressed by Amber Webber’s silky female backing vocals. But the joke–and his own jizz–is on McBean by song’s end.
The raunchiness continues on “I (Fuck) Mountains” and “Sweet ’69.” The former evokes Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac with its eerie, sparse blues, and proves McBean’s ability to create moving ballads with a few easy chords and minimal instrumentation. The latter uses a Bo Diddley beat and lo-fi, Billy Childish guitars to build an enveloping chug. Pink Mountaintops concludes with PM transforming Joy Division’s “Atmosphere”–one of history’s most solemn, icily beautiful songs–into a drunken garage jam that teeters between “I’m Waiting for the Man” and “What Goes On.” Even Ian Curtis worshippers would have to smile at its audacity.
