Since encountering Adrianne Lenker in 2014, Buck Meek has been a quietly essential half of the yin/twang relationship at the heart of Big Thief. On his 2018 self-titled debut solo album and 2021's Two Saviors, it was clear that Meek's musical identity still sprang largely from his Texas roots, with short, spare and poetic songs full of heartache and engine blocks out behind dusty gas stations. Just as Big Thief has steadily risen in stature and ambition, Meek also continues to climb new mountains — both real and metaphorical — reflected in this new album of love songs.
From the slow unfolding of opener "Mood Ring," it's clear that there's a new focus on production on Haunted Mountain. With a shuffling propulsion and stuttering guitar effects, the song sounds like Meek planted in a corner of the New York subway where he used to busk, the sounds of the city accompanying his heartbeat, secrets and memories of quieter times.
The mountain as a symbol for love carries throughout. On top of moving from Brooklyn to the hills of Santa Monica, Meek visited a variety of mountain ranges, and volcanoes, for inspiration. On "Cyclades" he achieves a kind of classic, noisy Neil Young electric folk that mines family memories, describing truck adventures on winding roads through Greece and Siskiyou, California. On the title track, one of four co-written by Jolie Holland, he sings a love song to Mount Shasta, inhabiting the persona of a hermit promising to never come down from his mountain home.
Meek even ventures off-planet for the crunchy electric guitar freakout "Undae Dunes," a tale of youthful love interrupted by a UFO abduction. That kind of psychedelic twist is what gives Haunted Mountain, and much of Meek's discography, the fuel to rocket past so many nostalgia-minded country bandwagoners.
However, a moment of fond homage does conclude the album. Having appeared in a recent documentary about legendary folk artist Judee Sill, Meek was gifted one of her journals by her family. "The Rainbow" features some of Sill's unreleased lyrics, given the kind of sun-dappled melancholy that glowed in much of her own music. It feels like the kind of happy haunting one might hope for on any mountainside.
(4AD)From the slow unfolding of opener "Mood Ring," it's clear that there's a new focus on production on Haunted Mountain. With a shuffling propulsion and stuttering guitar effects, the song sounds like Meek planted in a corner of the New York subway where he used to busk, the sounds of the city accompanying his heartbeat, secrets and memories of quieter times.
The mountain as a symbol for love carries throughout. On top of moving from Brooklyn to the hills of Santa Monica, Meek visited a variety of mountain ranges, and volcanoes, for inspiration. On "Cyclades" he achieves a kind of classic, noisy Neil Young electric folk that mines family memories, describing truck adventures on winding roads through Greece and Siskiyou, California. On the title track, one of four co-written by Jolie Holland, he sings a love song to Mount Shasta, inhabiting the persona of a hermit promising to never come down from his mountain home.
Meek even ventures off-planet for the crunchy electric guitar freakout "Undae Dunes," a tale of youthful love interrupted by a UFO abduction. That kind of psychedelic twist is what gives Haunted Mountain, and much of Meek's discography, the fuel to rocket past so many nostalgia-minded country bandwagoners.
However, a moment of fond homage does conclude the album. Having appeared in a recent documentary about legendary folk artist Judee Sill, Meek was gifted one of her journals by her family. "The Rainbow" features some of Sill's unreleased lyrics, given the kind of sun-dappled melancholy that glowed in much of her own music. It feels like the kind of happy haunting one might hope for on any mountainside.