Track Listing

1. Summer Above
2. Hey Moon
3. Girl Out West
4. Midnight Sun
5. Stockholm
6. Fjord Song
7. Chlorine Fields
8. Blood Is Clean

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #84797 in Music
• Released on: 2008-04-07
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Dreamy
Chicago's Speck Mountain are Karl Briedrick (guitar), Marie-Claire Balabanian (vocals, bass) and multi-instrumentalist Kate Walsh. Summer Above is their self-produced debut, which was originally released in the US in 2006 by Burnt Brown Sounds.

'Summer Above' starts as it means to go on with spectral guitars, grinding cello, farfisa drones and warm vocals. The result is a psychedelic drone, which is shaped by the environment you are listening in. On a damp and dreary day this is a melancholic, depressing listen but in the first throes of spring it takes on a dreamy beauty, which brings out the inner tree hugger in you.

It inhabits the same world as early Spiritualised, or more recently Brightblack Morninglight, but with the vocals of Hope Sandoval, so it's not doing anything new but what they are doing they do well - but note, not brilliantly. No more so is this apparent than on second track 'Hey Moon' where it builds and builds and builds AND....goes nowhere. This is the problem. Speck Mountain produce these swirling washes of noise but don't take them as far as they can go, the result being an album that lacks dynamics and trundles along in second gear.

'Girl Out West' gets my hackles up almost immediately when Balabanian sings "Girl out west I will be clean for thee". 'Thee'?! Why, oh why resort to that lazy Kaiser Chiefesque lyric writing? Anyway, apart from that the track is again a beautiful lesson in hypnotic psychedelic.

The rest of the album continues with the swishing farfisa and hammond, wrapping themselves around the delicately picked guitar refrains, with occasional saxophone adding to droning quality of the album. The only respite from this recipe is 'Stockholm' which clocks in at a measly 2'18". Embodied with the spirit of country, 'Stockholm' is the first track to resemble traditional tunesmithery and even employs some campfire whistling as if to highlight the fact.

Final track 'Blood Is Clean' is a high point, with its chilling refrain "My blood is clean but the devil is in me". The vocals resembling Suzanne Vega on her '99 degrees Fahrenheit' album and this is no insult, but again we are yet to see them reach for gear stick.

So eight tracks of shimmering, dream pop which is pleasant enough but ultimately doesn't go as far as you'd want. Best listened to with eyes glazed, red and half shut.

A "depressive but hopeful space for people".
Aiming to provide "a depressive but hopeful space for people", Chicago trio Speck Mountain ,s debut album Summer Above is a woozy combination of melodiousness and unearthliness, of accessible pop and trippy psychedelic. Karl Briedrick and Marie-Claire Balabanian spent two years of midnight studio time painstakingly overdubbing layers of guitar and bass using analogue tapes with Kate Walsh's sax and keyboards added later. The album is wash with reverb end echo suffusing the sustained, interweaving tones and melodies with an wraithlike delicacy. The voice of Marie-Clare Balabanian is more earthbound , her crisply enunciated slightly sultry tones grounding the songs and preventing them from floating away in a hazy gaseous cloud of billowing reverberations.
Comparisons can be made to Mazzy Star, Beach House, Low, Camera Obscura while the vocals recall Cat Power and Feist . Songs vary from the just over two minutes relative jaunt of "Stockholm " to two eight minute plus tracks -the clanging chords and interweaving organ of "Chlorine Pools" and the rather more diffuse bass notes and flickering filtered strains of "Girl Out West" which to be honest does outstay its welcome.
The main criticism that could be levelled at Summer Above is the tangible lack of variety in the songs. They are all mono-paced with nebulous keyboards, meticulously descending and repetitive guitar arrangements and osculated polite percussion. It's all very tasteful and some will hate this album for that very reason but immerse yourself in the music's tonal shifts and gradiated luxury and it becomes beautifully hypnotic. Songs like "Midnight Sun" , "Hey Moon" and the title track are mesmerising and the extra track for the UK release "Blood Is Clean" actually revels in a clinically catchy guitar riff.
Speck Mountain also offer in the brass bursts in Hey Moon" , the unearthly whistling on "Stockholm " and the coarser edges of the extra track glimpses that there is more to them than disseminated timbre and eddying organs. What's here is mostly terrific if you are prepared to surrender to it's pop filtered through the language of the subconscious, but there are signs that this band are capable of making music that stretches way beyond that . Their next album, already recorded I believe, should be fascinating .