Metal Mountains: Where the Trees are Paved with Gold
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.
The centerpiece “Flickers Within/Without” boasts the most prominent performance from Lubelski on violin and some of Golden Trees’ only percussion, in the form of a xylophone. Rush and Gubler offer unison guitar over the natural drone of the bass and violin, and though the song feels like it’s in a hurry to fill out its 4:28 runtime, the upped pace is a welcome shift. With such a subdued feel throughout, it would be almost expected that at some point Metal Mountains would just make the listener sleepy, and maybe they do as “Turn to the East” – a high point on its own – moves into “Silver Sun,” but that Golden Trees is only 35 minutes long ultimately proves a saving factor, as it’s too short to really come off as repetitive, rather sticking to its stated purpose and sounding all more accomplished for its consistency. “Silver Sun” might be the stillest moment Metal Mountains deliver, but there’s still plenty of undulating guitar and vocals to be swept away by.
I’ve racked my brain to find a recommendation point for Golden Trees, and here’s what I’ve come up with: “Recommended for fans of beauty.” As abbreviated closer “Prisms” plays out to its finish, the neo-psych/folk Metal Mountains emit has no other real frame of reference for me. One could situate the outfit in a line of New York acts a mile long, but it wouldn’t really do any good toward explaining the gorgeousness in what they do, and I think to call Golden Trees “hipster folk” is to cheapen the group’s range and creative drive. It’s pretty, pure and simple, but deceptively complex, each note counting almost double for the effect they have on the listener. These might not be the songs you put on for your beer-binge party weekend, but there are moments for which the mood they craft is almost too perfect.
Tags: Amish Records, Brooklyn, Metal Mountains, New York, New York City
