"Summer Above" by Speck Mountain
It's rare that a debut album is as patiently textured and consistently affecting as Speck Mountain's Summer Above. If this record belongs to any genre it's space-rock, but as the band's name would suggest, earthiness is being channeled as much as ether, with an instrumental palette that's haunted by classic soul vibes rather than compressed waves of distortion. Opalescent streams of organ and electric piano, minimal but highly melodic guitar, sax and melodica are fed through vintage amps and echo units, making it easy to imagine it was all recorded in the "Pacific sea caves" that singer Marie-Claire Balabanian alludes to in the album's rhythmically tranced centerpiece "Girl Out West." Songs build slowly, coalescing around Balabanian's slightly dazed vocals and offering an unexpected depth. The buoyant title track leads things off, seeming like the perfect, naive summer anthem until you get to the enigmatic lyric, "I feel free when I feel no one feeling me". "Hey Moon"
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Published: 2007-11-09 Provider: Artist Direct
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