Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love

Black Mountain found substantial success with last year’s proggy opus In The Future, though sixteen-minute psych-jams were never going to be to everyone’s taste. Now Outside Love, the third album Black Mountain main-man Stephen McBean has recorded as Pink Mountaintops, is here to try another tack, with beautifully romantic results. With Mazzy Star and Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift For You as its spiritual forebears, opener Axis: Thrones of Love combines guitar feedback with snare rolls and sleigh bells, setting up the album’s strung out Spiritualized-before-he-got-self-indulgent vibe. While We Were Dreaming’s heartbroken (and heart-breaking) country gospel lament and the garage rock kick of The Gayest of Sunbeams are definite highlights, but Vampire is the emotional pinnacle - as McBean sighs “You can suck out the blood but you can’t kill the heart of my love” to swooning strings, a choir join the defiant coda and the resultant heart swells are palpable.