Mountain Man
BIOGRAPHY
Amid crowds of reviewers hailing Mountain Man as the female Fleet Foxes, these three precocious women from all over America (one from each coast and one from the middle), have created a haunting, ephemeral sound all their own.
Their sparsely instrumented, near a capella songs evoke the mountains of their name, constantly returning to themes of the natural world, night skies and hazy love affairs, the natural elements often colliding unexpectedly with ruminations on sensuality and womanhood; the first verse of 'White Heron' states "your hand still moves up my fleece, the moon blue dress caressing knees", while a latter one muses "Broken wings won't bring you home, soft white tendons robe hollow bones, you hung those feathers from your ceiling, so the women you bring home lay down".
Their sound, ‘like three voices searching for something and coming together while they're searching’, as Molly terms it, is pure and innocent while also haunting and familiar. With just a delicate strum of acoustic guitar, their voices soar in sumptuous and heartbreaking harmonies, completed in record with a comforting layer of background hiss. Their songs manage to be at once expansive with natural reverb and the epic landscapes they evoke, while also intimate and personal to the three women.
Having met at Bennington, a liberal arts college in Vermont where the likes of Andrea Dworkin and Camille Paglia studied, the three were moved to sing, "by (their) love for people, and for trees, birds and mountains, the ocean, the night, the moon, and being a woman".
The band formed organically over s shared love of American folk and a happy coincidence- ‘Alex and I spent a summer sitting on the porch of a house singing "My Roots are Strong and Deep" by The Microphones over and over, and making a plan to cover the entirety of Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual. This project unfortunately never happened.
Some time passed and I heard Molly singing "Dog Song" in the living room of my house on campus, and convinced her to sing it to me at least ten times until I had memorized it. She then taught it to Alex. “A while later I wanted all three of us to play separate sets at a house show at my home off campus, and we figured out that we just needed to be a band. And so we were and are. It feels wonderful to sing together, it feels like homespace”, she tells us.
Two of them are still at Bennington, where they're studying Performance and Gender, and Theatre and Performance, while the third, Alex, graduated last year with a degree in Literature and Visual Arts and is now a nanny.
Their debut album, Made the Harbour, released on Bella Union in the UK last month, is heavy with the weight of traditional folk influences, country, and Appalachian styling’s of Gilian Welch, yet still manages to sound like a stripped back Joanna Newsom choir with an eerie timeless quality.
TOUR DATES:
The ladies are about to embark upon an August tour of the UK, taking in a few festivals, some dates in weird Scottish venues with The Low Anthem, and the Academies with Jonsi of Sigur Ros.
20/8/10 – Green Man Festival, Glanusk, Wales
25/8/10 – Komedia, Brighton, England (with the Low Anthem)
26/8/10 – The Arts Centre, Pocklington, England (with the Low Anthem)
28/8/10 – Bogbain Farm and Accordion Museum, Inverness, Scotland (with the Low Anthem)
29/8/10 – The Tunnels, Aberdeen, Scotland (with the Low Anthem)
30/8/10 – The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland (with the Low Anthem)
1/9/10 – The Colston Hall, Bristol, England (with Jonsi)
4/9/10 – Electric Picnic Festival, County Laois, Ireland
5/9/10 – The Academy, Glasgow, Scotland (with Jonsi)
6/9/10 – The Academy, Manchester, England (with Jonsi)
8/9/10 – The Academy, Leeds, England (with Jonsi)
9/9/10 – The Academy, Birmingham, England (with Jonsi)
11/9/10 – Bestival, Isle of Wight, England
12/9/10 – End of the Road Festival, Dorset, England
13/9/10 – The Academy, Bournemouth, England (with Jonsi)
14/9/10 – The Dome, Brighton, England (with Jonsi)
15/9/10 – The Troxy, London, England (with The Felice Brothers)
Read more: http://www.myspace.com/mountainmansquint#ixzz0u7vwPL6L
LINKS
http://mountainman.bandcamp.com/
http://www.myspace.com/mountainmansquint
http://www.facebook.com/mountainmansquint
http://www.last.fm/music/Mountain+Man
VIDEOS
Animal Tracks- Mountain Man
Honeybee- Mountain Man- Live at SXSW
Soft Skin- Mountain Man
Green Grass - Mountain Man cover Tom Waits