Rebuilding a mountain

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This article was published 19/09/2019 (2403 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Stephen McBean is Black Mountain’s main songwriter, but has become even more valuable to the band since getting his driver’s licence.

The West Coast-based band has been a hard-touring unit since 2004, but it wasn’t until two years ago that McBean finally learned to drive, got his licence and was able to take the wheel on the quintet’s many treks in countries around the world.

“I don’t even drive myself, so we’ve been useless our whole lives in that department,” keyboardist/synth manipulator Jeremy Schmidt says.

“You’ve got to make sure there are other people that know how to drive.”

McBean got his licence out of necessity after moving to Los Angeles several years ago, but Schmidt has remained in Vancouver, where the band formed, which means he has never had to get one.

“Vancouver is a city that’s easy to live there and not drive. Nothing’s that far away, there’s a good transit system, you can bike everywhere and the neighbourhoods are close,” he says.

The distance between the collaborators — the last remaining original members — meant lots of the songs on the band’s fifth album, Destroyer, were exchanged digitally, or fleshed out during jams when the entire band could get together.

With two members leaving the group since Black Mountain’s last album, IV, in 2016, Schmidt and McBean enlisted various friends to jam and record, which resulted in sketches of more than 20 songs that were whittled down and crafted into eight cohesive pieces ranging from blasts of 1970s-esque slabs of hard rock to neo-psych excursions.

“There is always a lot of material. We start with bits and pieces, even from previous recording sessions over the years and other things we’ve abandoned for one reason or the other, and left or forgot about, and come back to and listen with fresh ears and a refreshed notion of what to do. I like doing that: resurrect an old idea or riff that didn’t fit anywhere the first time,” Schmidt says.

One of the most notable songs pulled from the ashes was Horns Arising, which the band was jamming on for IV, but despite having a vocal idea, riff, bridge and chord progression, it was put on the shelf, Schmidt says.

When it came time to work on Destroyer, the band pulled out what it already had, added a new guitar figure, vocal melody and arrangement, which includes a prominent synth line, vocoder and acoustic bridge, and came up with one of the album’s highlights.

“It went through a few iterations before it reached the finish line. That doesn’t happen to every song, but when that does happen, it’s the best. It feels like something special,” Schmidt says.

Further adding new life into the album was the addition of several members who joined in the making of Destroyer to replace Amber Webber and Joshua Wells, who had been with the band since it formed, appearing on its debut self-titled full-length in 2005 and all subsequent albums, but left following the release of IV.

McBean went through his contacts and enlisted the likes of former Black Mountain member Arjan Miranda, Rachel Fannan (Sleepy Sun), Adam Bulgasem (Dommengang), Kliph Scurlock (Flaming Lips), Kid Millions (Oneida) and John Congleton (St. Vincent, Swans) to jam out some new tunes.

All the conspirators are credited on the album, with Fannan (vocals), Bulgasem (drums) and Miranda (bass) sticking around for the supporting tour, which stops in Winnipeg on Friday, Sept. 20, at the Pyramid Cabaret for an early show, with doors at 7 p.m. for opening act Majeure, the synth-based ambient space-rock project of Pittsburgh’s Anthony E. Paterra. (Montreal-based hip-hop/soul group Busty and the Bass takes the late slot, with doors at 10:30 p.m. for the two-band bill, which includes local soul-pop quartet Amadians.)

“It’s an odd album in that way. It was being made as the band was being remodelled, which is kind of an interesting way to do things. The first record was like that: the band was being made while the band was emerging. I joined when the band was recording. I played on the record and ended up joining the band,” Schmidt says.

rob.williams@freepress.mb.ca