Every musical movement provokes a counter-movement, and sometimes imitators that think they’re a counter-movement. Some may look under the hood of the new album titled Racing Mount Pleasant (by the newly-christened band known as Racing Mount Pleasant and featuring a song called “Racing Mount Pleasant”) and see some recycled parts once used in the construction of Black Country, New Road. Perhaps. Maybe they’ll also see a piece or two from Gang of Youths, the post-rock and blog-rock movements, or film scores of yesteryear. Indeed, then, it may be that the parts you’re observing making up this twisted up ball of energy are creating a product that is, as much as it can be, original. This record is a renewal of the band once known as Kingfisher, a band whose one album I listened to plenty in college; a transformation of a gorgeous but “what happened to those guys?”-bound Michigan outfit into a worldly, focused, capital-R Rock capital-B Band. Every one of the 13 tracks making up this 57-minute package is, in my imagination, playing over the tearjerking closing moments of an Independent Spirit Award sweeper.
A track like “Emily”, consumed in an equally valid capacity as a background tune accompanying a morning coffee and as a cranked-up over-ear headphones main-character theme song after a first date with the girl you’ll be thinking about all year, is enough to make this album unforgettable on its own merits. By the time that fourth track screams into high gear in the closing minute with the loudest horns the band could find, Kingfisher has shed its skin (yes, I know a kingfisher is a bird…so, maybe, it molted?) and moved into a new era. The title track, the conspicuously self-titled “Racing Mount Pleasant” defines both the confluence of influence and the tremendously individualistic soundscape that is so notable. The track’s first line, “You’re the one that needs a body”, is a line replicated from the title track to Kingfisher’s previous/only album, Grip Your Fist, I’m Heaven Bound; the band doesn’t seek to forget its past, even if a more popular Irish band of the same name chased them away from it. What follows is a song with the best chorus of the year—a chorus that also replicates a melody found in the aforementioned “Grip your fist”, and follows up with some of the most remarkable rock sounds in quite a while. One of the only mistakes on this record is that this certainly should have been the first track.
Should every song on this record be listened to as examples of an original band on an uncharted path? Certainly not. Influences decorate both sleeves of Racing Mount Pleasant, and if you can move past the similarities you may notice to their clear forebears, that fact may be a compliment. While its unpredictability could be a slightly shocking experience as the album flows forward, its command of its own specific sound and the saxophones and guitars that weave it together is, personally, why I listen to albums.
At risk of exaggerating its staying power, there may be no music I’ll revisit more this year. I’ll Race to Mount Pleasant any day.
