Exploring textured minimalism and a few other sonic impossibilities, psychedelic folkies Metal Mountains offer classy guitar meditations and soothingly echoed vocals across their Amish Records debut, Golden Trees. The trio remind at times of a less complexly-arranged version of fellow alliterative Brooklynite unit Silver Summit, crafting songs that bear an emotional weight despite their tonal sweetness, and occasional excursions into traditionally acid-laced territories. Golden Trees is the culmination of years of work for Metal Mountains, and it shows, as the record is a hypnotic 35 minutes that engulfs the listener with sustained notes that seem to expand in all directions the longer they ring out.

If anyone is leading Metal Mountains, it’s vocalist/guitarist Helen Rush, who is joined by fellow Tower Recordings alumni Pat Gubler (guitar) and Samara Lubelski (bass/violin). Her voice is a constant, calming factor on Golden Trees, and as the trio crafts soundscapes out of unsynchronized notes on “The Golden Trees That Shade Us,” Lubelski’s bass resting comfortably beneath her own violin, the atmosphere is paramount. It would be easy – really easy – to get lost in nature-worshipping hyperbole here, to talk about sepia forests and the quietness of streams, bird calls and naturalist bliss, but the fact of the matter is that what Metal Mountains have written for Golden Trees is undeniably human, the songs rife with longing and a kind of grazing breadth. Opener “Structures in the Sun” provides an active start compared to “Orange/Yellow” which immediately follows, but the tone throughout all of Golden Trees is peaceful, serene, an underlying flow within and between the seven tracks resulting in a cohesive, melodically beautiful whole.

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