Silver Mt. Zion - The stormy peaks of post-rock

Calling Silver Mt. Zion a mere offshoot of the more celebrated Godspeed You! Black Emperor would be not only reductive but downright trite. Three members (Efrim: guitar, piano, vocals; Thierry: double bass; Sophie: violin) of the aforementioned Canadians, authors of several masterpieces straddling post-rock and prog stretched to its outer limits, split off in December 2001 to launch this side project, which would go on to produce albums heading in very different directions from those of the parent band. While Godspeed You! Black Emperor moved toward sounds that also came to be dubbed "emotional post-rock," their stepsiblings chose the path of minimalism, built on double basses, violins, violas and piano. It's an atypical sound, that of Silver Mt. Zion. Folk and gypsy music, chamber-rock and post-rock intersect in a combination of extraordinary emotional intensity. Long suites brush against spiritual catharsis, offering up lacerated vocals, impetuous bursts of passion, swirling climaxes, classical austerity.

Their debut album, released in 2000 on Constellation, with the mile-long title He Has Left Us Alone, But Shafts Of Light Sometimes Grace The Corner Of Our Rooms, retraces the paths of time passing. The routes of eternity open up before harrowing suites with an intimate, apocalyptic mood. And while "Sit In The Middle Of Three Galloping Dogs" paints a vortex from which escape seems impossible, the violins and violas of "Stumble Then Rise On Some Awkward Morning," through constant layering, dig rhythmically into the most remote corners of the soul.

Silver Mt. Zion's intimate games tug at the heartstrings and move the listener. Just like the ethereal, delicate melody of the masterpiece "13 Angels Standing Guard 'Round The Side Of Your Bed," which embraces the spirit, lifts it, shakes it. A night-long vigil wraps around the mournful plea. Tears. The spectral sonic weaves, tinged with medieval hues on "Blown-out Joy From Heaven's Mercied Hole," lead into the closing "For Wanda." The violin sketches flights of fancy that perish in a sea of distilled tears. There's nothing more to say: it's a gem.

After expanding the lineup to six members, and the resulting rebranding of the band as the Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-la-la Band, the Canadians released Born Into Trouble As Sparks Fly Upward, recorded in just two weeks. The decadent spleen that characterized the debut is here, at least partly, dispelled. A decidedly more aggressive and forceful sound, combined with sections with a more electronic — and, why not, pop — flavor, enliven the record. But that's not necessarily synonymous with an improvement over the debut. While the impetuous drive of "C'mon COME ON (Loose And Endless Longing)," built on solid walls of guitars, violas and violins, ignites a spirit of defiance like few other tracks, the primal romanticism of "Built Then Burnt (Hurrah! Hurrah!)" avenges the loneliness of autumn nights. But the album's main flaw is the lack of that certain something that pierced the listener's spirit on their first (master)piece. It almost seems paradoxical, then, that the martial atmospheres marking the unstoppable march of "Take These Hands And Throw Them In The River" should flow into such a gentle finale, painted with chirping birds and woodland murmurs.

While the gothic weave of "Could've Moved Mountains" cuts through the air of nights wrapped in mystery, the violins regain their vigor on the closing "The Triumph Of Our Tired Eyes." Although it can be considered a reasonably successful album, the band's second full-length sits a couple of notches below its predecessor, almost at the threshold of merely passable. The atmospheres it conjures remain, in any case, darkly beautiful, classical in taste but (post)modern in execution.

Born Into Trouble As The Sparks Fly Upward effectively closes out the first chapter of the Canadian sextet's career. The following This Is Our Punk Rock (2003) marks a sharp change of direction and stands as the real programmatic manifesto of the Silver Mt. Zion project. What they call punk-rock is in fact nothing more than the fusion of a certain kind of folk — frustrating and disembodied, we might call it — with the kind of post-rock that drifts along the celestial trails of eternity. The tragic momentum merges with a purely emotional attitude, culminating in moments of total catharsis, sensory orgasm, spasmodic chaos. The Gregorian-tinged litany "Sow Some Lonesome Corner So Many Flowers Bloom" rolls out the red carpet for the slow but relentless advance of the violins, which, syncopated by the muffled thud of the drums, explode into an instrumental triumph à-la Sigur Rós. The ghosts of latter-day Current 93 surface in Efrim Menuck's searing vocal at the close of "Babylon Was Built On Fire/Starsnostars". The song-form, already partly followed on previous albums, is completely abandoned on This Is Our Punk Rock, giving way to a sequence of pagan prayers steeped in apocalyptic folk. The structure of the third track, "American Motor Over Smoldered Field", offers further proof of this. The baroque intro certainly doesn't seem to foreshadow an emotional climax of such magnitude: the violins climb steep melodic paths, sketching landscapes of immortal vastness and hinting at the end of the Universe. The pacifying dark-folk hymn of "Goodbye Desolate Railyard" brings things full circle. And the feeling remains that Silver Mt. Zion have hit the mark once again. The structures change, not the substance, one might say. And indeed, that's exactly how it is.

After the release in 2004 of the chilly EP Pretty Little Lightning Paw, credited to Thee Silver Mountain Reveries and made up of tracks left over from the This Is Our Punk Rock sessions, in 2005 the six Canadians returned with Horses In The Sky.

By now Efrim Menuck's voice appears with a certain frequency within the band's lengthy compositions. And the result is, at times, truly exhilarating. The six tracks making up their fourth full-length represent both past and future at once. If on one hand it's possible to trace all the elements that have defined Silver Mt. Zion's identity, on the other it's equally possible to pick out what could become the future guidelines of their sonic harmony. Thinking in particular of this second element, one cannot fail to mention the constant presence of that crooked, passionate vocal.

On the opening "God Bless Our Dead Marines", Menuck further contorts his voice, keeping the track's progress constantly balanced between desert folk and steppe-like sonorities. "Mountains Made Of Steam" takes on a magical GY!BE hue, dusting its dark, templar atmospheres with noise-prog surges, heralded by a choir that marks out the rhythm. It sounds like listening to an organ branding the centuries of time, clouds in the distance, fire-red horizons. And the title track, "Horses In The Sky", moves along sparsely, dry over a lone acoustic guitar. There's no shortage of missteps, mind you. One for all, "Hang On Each Other": here it's clear how the excessive reliance on vocals and bare, minimal melodies, at times accompanied only by ambient noise, can cause the band to lose sight of the main road. But Silver Mt. Zion deliver a strong finish. Another small gem is "Ring Them Bells (Freedom Has Come And Gone)", which once again represents a return to GY!BE's original sound, blended with the sonic texture of Menuck's former side-project: a hushed opening, piano filtered with the utmost care, Menuck once more front and center. It flows into the usual, yet still electrifying, climax. The violins rise over those walls of sound built by intertwining guitars, tangling in a sonic orgy that drains away quietly into an anthology-worthy noise finale.

An ideal meeting point between Enlightenment invective and Romantic aesthetics, 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons links different musical approaches in a successful mix. Violins and violas often fall away, replaced by guitar-driven outbursts that build progressively, in the best tradition of math-rock. Still, elements of continuity remain, such as the unbridled, emotional, visceral singing of minstrel Efrim Menuck, or the cliffs of sound against which the guitars crash.

Sixteen tracks in total, four of real substance. The first twelve tracks, very brief and linked by a single thread, form a spectral appetizer ahead of the four main pieces, each averaging 15 minutes in length. And already in "1,000,000 Died To Make This Sound", an open protest against the Iraq war, we can glimpse the first signs of the (semi) turning point. Although it opens and closes with an obsessive, harrowing dirge, the track develops according to a thoroughly math-rock attitude. The title track is simply anthology material: an almost 17-minute ride that opens on the menacing tones of an approaching storm, a storm that reaches its peak intensity in a finale that seems lifted straight from the notes of maestro Morricone, in an orgy of violas, violins and reasoned chaos.

On "Black Water Blowed/Engine Broke Blues" the violins take on a role of absolute prominence, unspooling between the harsh notes of detuned guitars. As an ideal tribute to the desert, the album's final track unleashes a verve worthy of previous works. A subdued vocal and notes stripped to the bone for the first eight minutes lead the listener toward a climax that is a hymn to the sun and to life. Notes that exude freshness, the taste of spring and light breezes, of daisies and primroses.

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