Speck Mountain // Badwater
This is an even sheet of dream pop; let it drift over you as you dirft away.
Release Date: 21st January 2013
Speck Mountain – Badwater (Carrot Top Records)
‘Badwater’, the third album by Speck Mountain starts as many indie films finish. The sparse opening chords – recorded so deliberately that you can hear their analog twang and chord progression clearly – and idle drum lollop call to mind a car driving down the desert scene; a resolute concluding ‘into-the-distance’ shot. It’s a strange way, it seems, to start an album, with so much relaxed pace, until you realise the rest of the album carries on in anger that way. There’s not much injection of pace, the whole album through, and it’s only the title track, ‘Badwater’, that seems like the only snarling, reluctant awakening from an otherwise uneventful sleep. But that’s not to say I don’t like it; Marie-Claire Balabanian’s soulful vocals drift in and out of the slumber of the album, and while they don’t add chapter marks to any of the tracks, they blend perfectly with the subtleties of the music, provided by co-founding member, Karl Briedrick and the new recruits, Chris Dye and Linda Malonis. They have been heralded as space rock exponents, but that would denote a little more psychedelia than I think is offered. This is an even sheet of dream pop; let it drift over you as you dirft away.
6/10 Emma Garwood
