The third album from Stephen McBean as Pink Mountaintops, Outside Love, was released this week on Jagjaguwar. Stephen McBean, also of Black Mountain, brought several friends into the fold, including some of the Black Mountain crew, Sophie Trudeau of A Silver Mt. Zion and Godspeed You Black Emperor, and Ashley Webber of The Organ and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. The list goes on.
Based out of beautiful Victoria, British Columbia, McBean’s album is about a lot of wonderful things. Woven throughout the various arrangements are tones of melancholy, hope, vampires, and bullet holes through the walls of the summer. McBean’s collected a lot of influences, each of them unique, each of them captivating, and put them into this 10-song collection. Each song is a fresh start, a surprising development, a change from the last. Is the album like a romance novel? It’s been suggested that it is. But I prefer to see it as a collection of singles, grabbed and inspired by those random moments, subtle or obvious, that need a song. Life could be lived to a soundtrack like Outside Love; with nothing certain but a start and a finish; yet unique, surprising and refreshing every step of the way in between.
Pink Mountaintops – Holiday
Pink Mountaintops – Outside Love
Pink Mountaintops – While You Were Dreaming
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