PINK MOUNTAINTOPS: Since their 2004 self-titled debut, Pink Mountaintops have supplied an outlet for the more arcane fascinations of Black Mountain frontman Stephen McBean. On Peacock Pools—Pink Mountaintops’ first new music in eight years—the British Columbia-born singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist shares 12 songs sparked from his magpie-like curiosity for a wild expanse of cultural artifacts: the sci-fi body horror of David Cronenberg, Disney Read-Along Records from the 1970s, early Pink Floyd and mid-career Gary Numan, John Carpenter movies, Ornette Coleman live videos, a 1991 essay on the cult of bodybuilding by postmodern feminist Camille Paglia. Featuring counterculture icons like Steven McDonald of Redd Kross and Dale Crover of Melvins, Peacock Pools alchemizes those obsessions into a body of work with its own enchanting power, the sonic equivalent of falling down a thousand rabbit holes at once and landing somewhere gloriously strange.
If Black Mountain represents the darker side of singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Stephen McBean's musical thinking, Pink Mountaintops is a vehicle for his brighter and more engaging ideas. While both bands share McBean's fondness for trippy, psych-infused sounds, Pink Mountaintops avoid the doom-inspired tone of Black Mountain to make room for a wider range of musical influences, matched to lyrics that playfully deal with his various obsessions, from favorite musicians to the edges of teen culture. McBean and his collaborators merged lo-fi production and arrangements with dashes of lysergic Americana on their 2004 self-titled debut and 2006's Axis of Evol. 2014's Get Back filtered McBean's melodic ideas through muscular rock guitars, and 2022's Peacock Pools made room for folk, pop, vintage electronics, and classic rock overtones.