Album Review: Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love

This album sounds like a thunderstorm.

If Black Mountain was influenced by Dark Side of the Moon and Zeppelin III, than Stephen McBean's alternate dimension band, Pink Mountaintops is straight from the post-grunge of the 90's. Is it cliche to bring up Seattle?

I would cringe myself, except "While We Were Dreaming" and "Axis Thrones of Love" sound like something out of the rainy city - in that way that makes you want to ride the subway in the cold and never exit. There was the teenager part of me that thought of driving to high school with "I Got You Where I Want You" on the radio. But let's not focus on that:

"If winter's could kill / And this was the one / that drove you screaming / Right back to where you belong"

The most interesting thing about Outside Love is the way it manipulates typical Romantic imagery into a heavy, fizzing, drunken rock. You can almost feel the drugs sluicing through your veins. It's got a sense of humor about it - the album begins with a question, "How deep is your love?" Which the singer asks while wailing about the blow-up girl he's fingering: "Mine was cheap and made of plastic / And full of holes to stick fingers"

But then it elevates the whole show. It takes it higher - to the mystical, stormlessness of heaven. "And I Thank You" (organ and Irish cheer reminiscent of Zeppelin's first album track Thank You)

"I ain't living no long lonesome nights / I've stopped calling that woman my wife / I see light at the end of this storm leading home"

So this is a whole new meaning to suicide. It's beautiful, almost neoclassical. Outside love ends the love novel with "Closer to Heaven" - a beautiful and huge stroke finish.

"I sent you a rose / Electrically wired / When things burn this brightly / Don't let them explode"

Epic. Here's one thing Outside Love is not: lonely. If there's something refreshing it's the spirituality that is so painfully lacking in folk (everyone is lonely and beer soaked).

One other thing: if this is making fun of love songs, than what is this album? To me, it's beautiful and symmetrical - something echoing and cold, somewhere in between sailing and suicide. The verses are as big as Pink Floyd, but the guitar buzzes in long, whining surges like something dirty and grungy. This is high-heavenly, and it's solid as a rock.

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