Black Mountain

Tue 8th Feb, 2011 in Features

Canadian psych-rockers Black Mountain are back out and about, but even with festival dates through Europe and the states and new album Wilderness Heart hot off the press, vocalist Amber Webber managed to find time to talk to FasterLouder about the new album, cross-Tasman rivalry and the joys of playing in forest amphitheatres.

As I speak to Amber, the band are loading into the Paradiso in Amsterdam. “We’ve played here a couple of times before, but this is our first time in the bigger room so we are looking forward to it. That and we always love coming to this part of Europe, we played in Belgium last night and it was definitely one of the highlights of the tour.”

The band is heading to Australia and New Zealand – “We haven’t been there yet so it’s pretty exciting. Is there some kind of rivalry between Australian and New Zealand bands? Because there’s been a couple of bands from New Zealand I’ve talked to seem to have a real chip on their shoulder but others are fine” – in March.

So far the band has played more than 40 shows in support of Wilderness Heart, with gigs across their native Canada, the US and string of European festival dates including one date at the Incubate Festival in Oisterwijk, Holland that featured the band playing in the middle of forest in a natural amphitheatre. “We were all sleeping on the bus and then pretty much woke up to see all these little elf shack houses. It was an amazing show. We were the only band on the bill and everything else was in stalls and out of the amphitheatre. So it was really nice to have people coming in just to see us. It was a huge compliment for the organizers to have faith in us like that.”

Wilderness Heart, the follow up to 2008’s In The Future, sees the band come away from its psychedelic roots to make an album that is more accessible with shorter songs and less complex structures but that still has that raw quality that attracts people to the band “People’s reactions to the new stuff has been pretty good so far, some people are still looking to hear the longer songs but the response for the new material has been positive.”

When asked whether the change was a deliberate decision the band had made during the songwriting process or something that spontaneously happened Webber explains that the band owed a lot to producers Randall Dunn and Dave Sardy. “We are always looking to do something a little different, and with this record we were looking to write more straight out rock songs. Dave really helped with trimming a few minutes off the songs.”

The band decided to go with two producers on the record but to avoid taking either out of home ground advantage, recorded part of the album in Los Angeles at the famous Sunset Sounds studio with Sardy and the rest in Seattle in at Dunn’s home studio. “We really wanted to work with both of the guys, so we laid down the bed tracks for five songs at Sunset Sounds with Dave and the rest of the album with Randall at his home studio in Seattle, which was a great way to do the album. Sunset Sounds is a fantastic studio and added a lot to what we tracked there. But Randall’s studio is so close to home that could just drive there. Both the guys are amazing producers and really helped shape the record.“