Mountain Movers

New Haven’s favorite psych-summoners, Mountain Movers, have been a staple here at the site, and it’s great to see another lysergic vision rise over the horizon. The band has shifted focus over the years, working through longform, fuzz-toasted jams in the early days and shifting to Sonic Youth singe with a wandering spirit more recently. If you’ve seen the band live in the last year or so there’s also been a Kosmiche stretch slinking into the sets. Those longform impulses are back, but this time the fuzz has been doused and the tones have turned liquid and limber. The band’s new album, Walking After Dark, weaves some of the band’s more compact compositions with the cosmic climate they’ve cultivated.

True to the album’s title, there’s a nocturnal spirit at play, something that only makes sense once the scorch of the sun has receded from the sky. The album opens into the sundown saunter of “Bodega On My Mind/The Sun Shines On The Moon” setting the tone for the coiled calm to come. They swap between a comfortable aural amble and the pulsing cosmic corners, bookending each disc with heavy, heady dives into the ether. Longtime listeners might notice that a bit of Kryssi’s third-degree amp burn has been cooled on the album, but even cast in more subtle shades, she remains one of the most powerful forces in psych. Battalene’s more reclined riffs pair perfectly with the burrow into oblivion and the meditative mindset of Dan Greene’s songs. Proving that evolution is constant and crucial, Mountain Movers open into a new era with confidence and, as usual, come out at the forefront of the current psych cast.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.