Musical Mountaineering
Though the three dames in Mountain Man are, noticeably, not men, there is something most mountainous about their rustic folksinging: their wavering, warbling, three-part harmonies summoning imagined Appalachian vistas; romantic visions of rural families caroling together on sticky summer nights, the buzz of insects their only backing.
These evocations of wholesome, idyllic Americana are reflected in the music of Mountain Man. On their debut album, Made the Harbor, the Bennington, Vermont-based trio draw from hymnal and traditional, and keep their own compositions rooted in the land; singing of woodlands and meadows, of dogs and cats, of —quite literally— the birds and the bees.
On their LP's last serenade, "River," the women of the Man —Molly Sarle, Amelia Randall Meath, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig— actually sound like the birdlife they otherwise describe; hooting and cooing with full-throated trills as the tune —and the album— winds its way towards a figurative, final sea.
The Unaccompanied Voice
Across Made the Harbor, Mountain Man sing with little-to-no backing: occasionally employing a solitary acoustic guitar, but just as often going unaccompanied. Freed from the yoke of unnecessary instrumentage, their voices ring out clear and pure. Each vocalist is completely alive and responsive to the sound coming out of the mouths of the other two: every expelled breath, every pitched note, every turned phrase.
And, where modern-day a cappella groups are often a forum for hysterical vocal gymnastics and a cacophony of competing voices, Sarle, Meath, and Sauser-Monnig are unafraid of the central silence of their project. On "Mouthwings" —wherein they sing of midwifing their songs into the world, hearing their words floating over "forest landings" into "salty caves"— they wrap their vocal plaits together with both tightness of togetherness and whorls of flourish, but always take a step back, between lines, to take a breath. And, blessedly, you can hear them inhale, tiny gasps of oxygen in caverns of between-verse nothingness.
Mountain Man understand full well the elemental power in listening to the human voice; in hearing it naked and unadorned, as well as coming together in harmony with others. They know that, somehow, something in that taps into some deep, primal part of our naked-ape brain, and connects us in a not-entirely-understood way. Their band is a study in the simple, unsullied power of the human voice, embracing both the transcendentally spiritual and profoundly mortal qualities of communal singing.
Record Label: Partisan
Release Date: July 20, 2010
