“There’s going to be a really relaxing soundtrack behind this interview,” Black Mountain drummer Joshua Wells observes. He’s not kidding: the five-piece is gathered for dinner at Veggiebowl, a Vietnamese restaurant in East Vancouver, and the music being played over the speakers is a mixture of chiming new age tones and twittering birdcalls.
It’s an ironic backdrop against which to interview one of the city’s most celebrated psych rock exports. Black Mountain has gathered to discuss its newly released fourth album, IV, an ambitious prog odyssey that’s filled with gut-punching guitar jams and spacious synth explorations. Its release comes six years after the band’s prior LP, 2010’s Wilderness Heart.
“We had to [decide] what we wanted to do as people in life and as musicians, and whether we wanted to make another record,” singer-guitarist Stephen McBean offers in regards to the long span between albums. “I think the time away was good. Less pressure. Finding everyone’s strengths and weaknesses.”
During the break, all of the members kept busy with side-projects. McBean bounced between a handful of stylistically varied bands while living in Los Angeles (quirky rock with Pink Mountaintops, hardcore with Obliterations, self-described “death folk” with Grim Tower). Singer Amber Webber teamed up with Wells for an electronic pop album as Lightning Dust, and she launched the folk project Kodiak Deathbeds. Keyboardist Jeremy Schmidt released a synth soundtrack as Sinoia Caves. Longtime bassist Matthew Camirand left the group and has since been replaced by Colin Cowan.
“The thing with Matt was tough, because the band was built on the chemistry of the initial five people,” McBean admits. “It was depressing to not play together anymore, but for him, he’s always wanted to front a band and write the songs.”
Wryly, the frontman adds, “Not everyone can be in a van together for seven fucking years.”
Once the band members reconvened, they worked gradually, drawing together material from an assortment of sources: Webber penned the psych-folk dirge “Line Them All Up,” and McBean transformed a live Pink Mountaintops cut into the looming electro-rock scorcher “You Can Dream.” Eight-and-a-half-minute opener “Mothers of the Sun” was based on an unreleased cut from their archives, and it features one of their heaviest, ‘70s-inspired hard rock licks.
“We all knew we didn’t want to lose that riff, especially as we get older and softer,” McBean says with a self-deprecating laugh, crediting Schmidt with resuscitating the song during a Sinoia Caves performance. The keyboardist explains, “The riffs dry up. It was my way of trying to trick the band into looking at that song again because I didn’t want it to go to waste.”
Recording sessions took place at Avast! studio in Seattle with returning producer Randall Dunn, with additional tracking done at Black Mountain’s local Balloon Factory space. IV’s title was an easy choice: not only is it the band’s fourth album, it’s a tribute to similarly titled LPs by Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and the Stranglers.
“And Beyonce,” adds Webber. “I just put that together the other day.”
With IV out now, the collaborators have booked an extensive tour of Europe and North America that will keep them on the road until at least July. “It’s exciting to go on tour with a new record, because we’d done a lot of touring,” McBean enthuses. “We could tour for a bunch more years without a new record, probably, but then you run the risk of — what is it, ‘heritage act’?”
This comment provokes elicits chuckles from the bandmates around the table. “Red Robinson showroom, here we come,” Schmidt jokes, referring to the Hard Rock Casino’s theatre. “We laugh about it now, but it’s just two years away.”
