I wish I lived in the sixties. I don’t know whether it’s parental nostalgia, my obsession for vinyl or my undying hatred for the new Melbourne Model, but it seems like the sixties were a better time to live. Though I am reconciled to the fact that I will probably never get firsthand experience of the decade of fringes and free love, I was present for the next best thing at The Corner in Richmond on Saturday night. In a sell-out encore show, Canadian retro-rockers Black Mountain (ably supported by Adelaide imports Lady Strangelove) served up a steaming hot slice of good old West Coast sixties psychedelia and justified their reputation as one the coolest live acts on the planet.
It was amazing that the crowd, a healthy mix of indie hipsters and nostalgic thirty-somethings, could even hear after the musical ear bashing they received from opening act Zond. The local five-piece were loud. And I mean fucking loud. While noise can be used to great effect in music (look no further that new indie darlings The Pains of Being Pure At Heart) the squalling guitars and screamed vocals were way too much. Technically Zond were very capable, and perhaps in a heavier context they would have been better received, but in comparison to the riff heavy psych of Black Mountain they seemed an incongruous choice to support.
Lady Strangelove however were excellent. While several bands, namely Wolfmother and more recently Tame Impala, have had more commercial success in reviving psych rock, Lady Strangelove are by far the most faithful in their reinterpretation of the genre. They do a fantastic job of aping psych’s biggest, from Blue Cheer to Black Sabbath. Their music has a timeworn quality to it; tracks like Teleport with its wah wah saturated guitar line, or Rotate with its crashing marshal rhythm section, could have come straight from your dad’s record collection. Visually they look the part too, with plenty of long greasy hair and rock star moves, and frontman Benny wails like the best of them, his high pitched yawl never missing a note. It was a welcome blast from the past and the perfect preamble for Black Mountain.
Despite the portentous title of last year’s sporadically excellent sophomore LP In The Future, Black Mountain are a band steeped in the past. For reasons other than the track title their band name checks, they have frequently been compared to perhaps the greatest exponent of psychedelic music, Led Zeppelin (no mean feat in itself), and after listening to opener Tyrants you can see why.
It began with a brooding four note arpeggio, slowly building over layers of ominous Moog synths as the band members, a grizzled, straggly looking bunch, took to the darkened stage. It then exploded into a swaggering tower of a song, built around a searing riff from hirsute frontman Stephen McBean and a shuddering Dazed and Confused-esquse bassline. It was a song of several discrete, but meticulously constructed sections. Key signatures shifted and changed, as did the instrumental focus, so that one minute it was a plaintive ballad, the next a spacey, psychedelic jam. It is their inventiveness as a group, as well as their sheer musical virtuosity (*Matt Camirand* is one of the best live keyboardists I’ve heard) that are most reminiscent of Led Zeppelin.
But whereas a band like Lady Strangelove succeed, and in some ways are limited to, consolidating a musical genre, Black Mountain make it their own. Angels is a catchy, foot stomping rocker, which shows off the charming, often haunting vocal interplay of McBean and spaced out lead vocalist Amber Webber. The interesting, patently melodic quality of their harmonies is an element seldom seen in music as heavy as this, and it really works. Ultimately however, it is Black Mountain’s ability to avoid the clichés of psychedelic rock, eschewing face melting shreds for concise punchy solos, replacing windmills and dance moves with stately, humble stagecraft that defines their music and makes them such a consistently interesting band, and an awesome live act. I left the corner with my appetite for the sixties well and truly satisfied because who really needs the sixties when you have these guys.
to listen to their music now on 
