BUCK MEEK - Haunted Mountain (Radio Date: 25-05-2023)

BUCK MEEK (BIG THIEF)

annuncia il suo album
Haunted Mountain
in uscita il 25 agosto 2023 su 4AD
 
GUARDA IL VIDEO DELLA TITLE TRACK
"HAUNTED MOUNTAIN"

3 date in Italia
12 settembre - Circolo Magnolia, Milano
13 settembre - Spazio 211, Torino
16 settembre - Locomotiv Club, Bologna

Il cantautore e chitarrista texano dei Big Thief Buck Meek annuncia il suo nuovo album, Haunted Mountain, in uscita il 25 agosto. Questo è il suo primo album su 4AD e insieme all'annuncio condivide il primo singolo e title track dell'album "Haunted Mountain", un brano scritto insieme alla sua amica di lunga data Jolie Holland.

Dopo l'amatissimo Two Saviors del 2021, Haunted Mountain è il terzo album solista di Meek. Haunted Mountain parla d'amore e... qualcos'altro, qualcosa più grande dell'amore, qualcosa che non sfida esattamente l'amore, ma si pone in contrasto con esso. Una pienezza dell'anima, o una pienezza che cerca l'anima. Meek dice che le canzoni d'amore sono le più difficili da scrivere. "Non canzoni di rottura, ma una vera canzone d'amore scritta seriamente? Oggi è un tabù", dice. "A volte si ha la sensazione che tutte le grandi canzoni d'amore siano già state scritte". 

Il singolo principale, "Haunted Mountain", è sostenuto da testi dolci scritti da Meek e Holland, anche lei texana e coautrice di cinque delle 11 canzoni di Haunted Mountain. Le prime due strofe e il ritornello di "Haunted Mountain" sono stati scritti da Holland come una canzone d'amore per il Monte Shasta, nel nord della California, mentre l'ultima strofa è stata scritta da Meek, per cercare insieme la reciprocità con la natura. "Si tratta di essere umili di fronte alla cosa da cui si trae energia, solo a quel punto inizia una relazione vera e propria", dice Meek. Spinto dalla chimica incontaminata della sua band, "Haunted Mountain" è presentato insieme a un video diretto da Riley Engemoen che cattura la magia del gruppo in studio.
 

WATCH: Buck Meek – ‘Haunted Mountain’ Official Video
 

560 miles from Meek’s hometown of Wimberly, TX, the Franklin Mountains – or more reverently named, Sierras de los Mansos – rise over the tops of the endless acres of pecan trees that surround Sonic Round in the border of Tornillo, where Haunted Mountain was recorded. The songs were written in mountains: by cold springs in the Serra de Estela of Portugal, on the submerged volcano of Milos in the Cyclades, Valle Onsernone in the Swiss Alps (where Haunted Mountain’s cover photo was taken), and the Santa Monica range where Meek now calls home – all where his new love was born.
 
On Haunted Mountain, love often assumes a natural form – crystal ball dew-drops, green rivers and grasses, tears bottled. Sometimes it becomes artificial – mood rings, earrings, a pair of jeans, motorcycles, and spacecraft. Sometimes cosmic – “I fell into a black hole with the hot flux of hazel” (from ‘Paradise’). Love is a consciousness here, interacting with the lovers, greeting them, watching them sometimes, becoming them sometimes. It extends beyond romance, examining the inexhaustible bond between mother and sun, and asks – is love a form of magic? “When you are in love, it inhabits your environment, animates the inanimate, charging everything around you with a sense of meaning,” he says. “And not just new love; also love of many years.”
 
Since Buck’s self-titled full-length album, his band has remained consistent – Adam Brisbin (guitar), Austin Vaughn (drums), and Mat Davidson (pedal steel, bass on Buck Meek and Two Saviors). In the year or so leading up to recording Haunted Mountain, they were joined by Ken Woodward (bass) as well as Meek’s brother, Dylan, who joined them for the session on piano and synths. Produced by the band’s own Davidson, Haunted Mountain was recorded and mixed in two weeks by Adrian Olsen, who also performed the sound manipulation via modular synthesizer that can be heard throughout the album.
 
One intention was to make a hi-fi album that contrasted with the intentionally lo-fi approach of Two Saviors, while preserving the intimacy. Recorded live to two-inch tape, the group played together in one big room, with no headphones. In Davidson’s words, “the music here is an expression of a group. I asked for the job because I felt strongly that we shouldn’t bring in someone from outside the band. Otherwise, the only personal desire I had was that we be able to explore space, that we let the music open up and slow down in contrast to previous records – not in terms of tempo but rather overall movement, information between the beats.”
 
Meek believes that all of the great love songs have not been written yet. In between the lines of Haunted Mountain, we hear that love, in every form, is the creation of home, from within – forever leaving one to find another.

Buck Meek – Haunted Mountain
Pre-order HERE
 
Tracklist
1. Mood Ring
2. Haunted Mountain
3. Paradise
4. Cyclades
5. Secret Side
6. Didn’t Know You Then
7. Undae Dunes
8. Where You’re Coming From
9. Lullabies
10. Lagrimas
11. The Rainbow

 
PRAISE FOR BUCK MEEK
 
“His music is saturated with peculiar, beautiful imagery — a motel with a telephone seashell, two tons of turtle doves, a cottonmouth swallowing its tail.” - NPR Music
 
“These reflections on love, pain and rebirth sound sage and weathered, way beyond Buck Meek’s years, in much the same way as Bill Callahan and Leonard Cohen before him.” — Guitar Magazine
 
“Two Saviors is an earthy, gentle work of indie-folk imbued with quiet wonder.” — Paste
 

BUCK MEEK TOUR DATES
 
18 August – BRECON BEACONS, UK, Green Man Festival
19 August – OSLO, NORWAY, Langs Akerselva
21 August – COPENHAGEN, DENMARK, Stengade
22 August – BERLIN, GERMANY, Kantine am Berghain
23 August – GRONINGEN, NETHERLANDS, Noorderzon Festival
26 August – EDINBURGH, UK, Summerhall
27 August – GLASGOW, UK, Stereo
28 August – LEEDS, UK, Brudenell Social Club
29 August – MANCHESTER, UK, YES
30 August – LONDON, UK, Lafayette
1 September – BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, Botanique
3 September – VLIELAND, NETHERLANDS, Into the Great Wide Open Festival
5 September – AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS, Paradiso | Tolhuistuin
6 September – PARIS, FRANCE, Le Hasard Ludique
12 September – MILAN, ITALY, Magnolia Segrate *
13 September – TURIN, ITALY, Spazio211 *
14 September – NYON, SWITZERLAND, La Paranthese* 
16 September – BOLOGNA, ITALY, Locomotiv Club *
27 October – NEW YORK, NY, USA, Racket
 
* solo
 
 
BUCK MEEK ONLINE
buckmeekmusic.com
Instagram: @buckmeek
Facebook @buckmeeksongs