World Premiere

Father Mountain

On Leaving and Being Left Behind

Joel Frieders | January 4, 2015

When I hear a band for the first time, and (fuck goose pimples) I get a goose boner, I have to set aside time with the band without any outside influence to see if that boner was over what I was actually hearing or just a hope-boner. I got a hope-boner over a band a few years ago and before I had taken a moment with them I contacted them and called them amazing, only to finally listen to them and find all of the things I loved about them completely assumption based. 

I needed to start vetting my boners bros. 

A quiet room or a solo road trip or a pair of awesome fucking headphones while my kids try to kill each other, I needed one of those options to explore what initially gave me such a massive case of the holy shits. I needed this bandboner to actually be actual bros. 

So I got the moment I needed and I am happy to confirm that my boner was not a hope-boner. It was based solely on the holy shits entering my side-faceholes. 

Whoever the fuck Father Mountain is, the opening track "On Leaving & Being Left Behind" on their five song EP On Leaving & Being Left Behind is beyond massive. It's got the innocence of being about adolescent love, but the displaced pain of a brooding and galloping build on a post rock track from a band with a name that's thirteen words long. For example, something like: The Grip of Death Upon the Young, Warmed By the Embers of Morality. Something like that. 

I hadn't latched on to the vocals the first time I got through it, but after abruptly hitting reverse to start the track over, the addition of a female throat over the chorus makes "On Leaving..." one of the better songs I've ever listened to. It's captivating, painful, tighten your coat around your body while you turn your back to the wind fucking gorgeous. It's like the alone we all share in only the past tense, but you're aware of how this particular feeling of alone is somehow welcoming in the present. 

I must have listened to this fucking song nine times in a row the first time I heard it. It's like a singer songwriter on top of a post rock band being powered by a double bass pedal. It's a piece of lacy underwear on a medieval knight bro.

Father Mountain sounds like Band of Horses smooshed together with If These Trees Could Talk, and that loose jawed indie folk/rock mouth that all the indie rock kids were doing when I was in college. 

Where on the one side they're capable of creating massively inspiring and mature songs, they still play swords with sticks and giggle when they audibly fart and they're on their parents insurance.

I'd encourage Father Mountain to retain as much of their youth as possible because the songs they're pumping out are years beyond the feels they should already feels, but then again I saw some porn I shouldn'tve seen the other day and I'm pretty sure I've lost all of the innocence I used to think I still had.

Either way, I would recommend a quick purchase of this shit, if only to encourage the young to keep making more music. These fucking young shits, they're alls we has bros.