Mountain Mirrors - Dreadnought Review
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We live in an age where the guitar (and many of its greatest players) has been sadly demystified. Endless clone bands cover the greats, making their songs seem cheap and mundane. Commercials for common, everyday products have stolen song craft's mystery, turning magic into advertisement. Even a game like Guitar Hero---though a fun time---has turned some of music's most powerful moments into button mashing for scores. The songwriter is dead and his guitar lays silent.
No more. The brainchild of Massachusetts troubadour Jeff Sanders, Mountain Mirrors is a band which recalls the glorious times when a man and a guitar were all it took to change the world. Their new album, Dreadnought, as such rightfully features an axe soaring proudly through a forest of bleak trees.
The music on Dreadnought will never be considered the most technical, fast, or complex. It does, however, resurrect the notion of a lone soul transcending reality with music. Like Hendrix, Dylan, and Drake before him, Jeff Sanders is a man who does not simply play guitar but physically lives it.
And what a life it is! Dreadnought is less an album and more a profound religious experience. As light as the wind and as transparent as moonlight, the music on offer here is deeply moving psychedelic acoustic rock. Each song quietly hides joy behind its translucent, shimmering emotions, like a raindrop stuck between panes of glass.
With a fluid sense of dynamics reflecting upon humanity's entire emotional spectrum, Dreadnought is a transformative journey despite its clever minimalism.
"Born Deranged," for example, is deceptively simple. At first glance, it trips like drugs and burns like fire. By song's end, however, this seemingly feather-light duel between crystalline synths and moody strumming has morphed into a sinister, acidic high replete with shamanistic guitar rituals and tribal drum freakouts.
"Field of Grass," meanwhile, masters the art of groove on a tantric level beyond most chanting monks. The looping percussion is an endlessly circular spiral of rolling drum curls, drifting underneath some of the most mesmerizing rock since the days of Sleep. Guitar notes flutter like stabs into the spiritual realm, only to be pulled back by the desperation of reality. Raw and savage, "Grass" stretches to infinity with a power last wielded by a simple man named Jimi Hendrix.
"I Don't Belong" turns alienation into soothing apathy, its guitars like a blanket on a chill night by a dying fire. Like casting off the comfortable wrapping and feeling the sudden sing of the cold, icy shards of piano keys stab through the soft guitar strums, slowly overwhelming them. The end result is one of the most vulnerable, poignant moments of 2008.
"End of Days" skips with hypnotic rhythm. The vocals are beautiful, transcendent. As notes caress one's eardrums like flickering rays of sun light, heart-stopping strings push things off a cliff before freefalling into disarming bliss.
"The Elemental" is a disorienting dimensional portal, like audio jet lag. Largely composed of brief, otherworldly tones, it recalls the soundtrack of Bladerunner as well as some of Sanders' earlier instrumentals on Lunar Ecstasy.
"Your Dirge" provides the musical fireworks on Dreadnought, sounding the world like a one man guitarmy invading Led Zeppelin's Kashmir. Explosive guitar collide with well-rendered symphonic effects, producing a supernova as fiery as it is brief.
"Riot Within" quietly dispels the tidiness of life with a hysteria shrouded in Unplugged mystique. A glorious head trip, "Riot" shimmers like the air over a hot piece of blacktop in the desert.
"Birds in a Rat Race" is escapism at its best. Though it begins with wistful keys and humble guitar notes, it soon builds itself into a towering jam of rock opera proportions. Be it soaring choruses or moody shoegazing, this song has it all.
"Better Days" glimmers like shiny gold, its lush guitars weaving a tapestry of joy with tribal percussion. It is purely pleasurable hypnosis, the kind of dreamy pop best perfected by Beck.
"A Spell to Block the Sun" flat out rocks. Winding chords hover ominously behind half-realized guitar notes and a tripping rhythm section. Mind-blowing solos rage, spiraling high into the stratosphere before plummeting back to Earth like spiritual meteors. This is undoubtedly my favorite song on the album and must be heard.
"Angelic," on the other hand, is a fragile piano ballad. With nothing besides keys and his voice, Sanders collapses into a catharsis as cleansing as a baptism. The vulnerability a song like this requires to work is astounding, and Sanders pulls it off with aplomb. As such, Dreadnought ends with a special resonance few other albums can match.
Moody, meditative, and magical. These three words are just a few I could throw out over the newest Mountain Mirrors album. Like all truly great things, however, such terms are not really ever enough. Get this now.
Mountain Mirrors' Dreadnought
1. Born Deranged
2. Field of Grass
3. I Don't Belong
4. End of Days
5. The Elemental
6. Your Dirge
7. Riot Within
8. Birds in a Rat Race
9. Better Days
10. A Spell to Block the Sun
11. Angelic
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Mountain Mirrors - Dreadnought
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