North Carolina-based folk trio Mountain Man, featuring Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, Amelia Randall Meath, and Molly Erin Sarlé are releasing a deluxe reissue of their 2010 debut album, Made the Harbor (Friday, November 5th via Psychic Hotline). We reviewed the original here.
The album is a celebration of womanhood, and while as a whole it offers a marriage between Joni Mitchell’s love found/love lost recollections, and the bluegrass drawl of Gillian Welch as she channels the rebellious woman, bringing her to the foreground in her survival murder ballads, Mountain Man present femininity and female sexuality as strong “screaming so loud/staring so proud“. Melanie McGovern, Folk Radio UK
Following their 2010 release, there was a long hiatus filled with personal projects until their return in 2018 with Magic Ship.
They have just shared “Play It Right”, the Mountain Man song that served as the eventual catalyst for Sylvan Esso in 2013, when Amelia Meath approached Nick Sanborn about doing a remix of the track.
Of the recording, Mountain Man shares, “This song encapsulates much of the exploratory essence of Mountain Man–the melody is like a balloon tethered to the earth by a vocal line that holds down something of a reliable counter-form, while the third part is free to be the wind, and even to be improvised in performance. It holds a special place in our hearts for the role it played in the formation and mythology of Amelia and Nick’s band.”
The deluxe version of Made the Harbor will feature a second LP’s worth of bonus material – unreleased songs, live sessions recorded at Bennington College’s Greenwall Auditorium at the inception of the project, along with covers of the Mills Brothers, Arthur Russell, and then-Vermont contemporary toothache, and more. The deluxe packaging includes a collage culled from the band’s personal collection as well as live photos from that time, and a beautiful personal essay about the record penned by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy.
Stream/Buy: https://smarturl.it/MM_MTH10yr
Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez