Still “high” on last
year’s album…

 

By Blurt Staff

 

 

Last year Black
Mountain released their
critically-acclaimed album “In the
Future“, hailed by critics as one of the best of 2008.  “In the Future” was shortlisted for
the prestigious Polaris Prize – an award for the best full-length Canadian
album based on artistic merit. Black
Mountain performed
“Stormy High” for the tall red-haired gentleman Conan O’Brien and his
audience in February during their “Friendship Tour Two Thousand and
Great” with Bon Iver.

 

 

Here’s what we had to say about the album:

 

 

The Canuck quintet
clears the bong and coughs up another masterpiece. Once more devoted, but not
bound, to the psychedelic aesthetic, Stephen McBean and crew weave a tapestry
of trippy tunes both heavy and deep. Opener “Stormy High” couches big dumb
riffs in ominous organ and Amber Webber’s moans, which dovetail with McBean’s
own Young-meets-Osbourne yowl. Black Mountain also shows its gravitas by
employing both profundity and puissance in its tunes, like “Bright Light”: a
17-minute epic that starts as a quiet lament/rumination and builds to a
900-foot tall (though also subterraneanly equidistant) jam where guitar and
organ do a perverse West Side Story knife
dance ritual as pointless as it is significant. Coming after 250 shows behind
2005’s Black Mountain, it’s a tight, intense ride-all
sound and fury signifying awesome.

 

 

 

2008 saw some significant travel: SXSW, Coachella, All
Tomorrow’s Parties, The Glastonbury Festival, Brazil, the Czech Republic, and
many more festivals and countries.  Much of it was chronicled in bassist
Matt Camirand’s excellent blog:
http://www.matthewmeridian-wishinonehand.blogspot.com/

The band’s friends and brothers in Canuck-dom, The Sadies, will be joining the
band on a West Coast tour in late March following Black
Mountain’s tour in Australia. 

All dates will be performed with The
Sadies:

03/20/09 San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Shop: BUY
TICKETS
03/21/09 Los Angeles, CA – The Echoplex: BUY
TICKETS
03/22/09 San Diego, CA – Casbah: BUY
TICKETS
03/23/09 Santa Cruz, CA – The Crepe Place: BUY
TICKETS
03/25/09 Portland, OR – Hawthorne Theatre: BUY
TICKETS
03/26/09 Bellingham, WA – The Wild Buffalo  
03/27/09 Seattle, WA – Neumos: BUY
TICKETS