Weaving wondrous webs of intricate melodies, Vermont trio, Mountain Man have released an intricate album inspired by sun, sea and salty air. 2ser Subscribers can win a copy all week on Breakfast, Overdrive and Static.
We made the harbor filled with wind, bellowing sea lions, and sand dollars from past loves, current sisters. What we have collected are chimes in the salty air. Made the Habor is an album to swim home to, and to sail away with. It grazes the horizon with its sails.
Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Randall Meath met at Bennington College, in the small town of Bennington, Vermont. They are from the West, Middle West and Eastern United States. It was not until Molly visited Bennington during a term off that the seeds of Mountain Man were set on the windowsill. At the sound of Molly playing a song in the living room of their shared house, Amelia rushed down the stairs and demanded it be taught to her. At this point, Molly and Amelia were not friends. But they shared the bond of mutual heartbreak, of having been left with space between open arms. Amelia trapped Molly in her room upstairs where she sang Dog Song over and over, bewildered and a little afraid, until Amelia felt she could remember it well enough to teach Alex. When Molly came back to Bennington in the spring, Alex and Amelia excitedly sprang into her room, and all three sang together for the first time. They were equally bewildered by each other and by the sounds they made together. Molly and Amelia are still in school, studying Performance and Gender, and Theater and Performance, respectively. Alex graduated in the spring of 2009 with a degree in Literature and Visual Arts. She is now a nanny for two wonderful children.
The music of Mountain Man is nestled in the tradition of American folk, but shoots like diamond dust out of the nest into the high, wide atmosphere. Their songs are shaped by three searching voices, encompassing harmonies and a shared belief in and love of the world. They are mutually moved to sing by their love for people, and for trees, birds and mountains, the ocean, the night, the moon, and being a woman. They all love the rambling, rumbling, rolling summer....
Recorded in an old ice cream parlor from the turn of the 20th century, each track of Made the Harbor is imbued with the likes of warm breaths, creaking of floors, soft thumping of hands against their bodies, the clearing of their throats, or the false start of a tune, evoking the feeling of being in the room with the band as the record plays: demand for intimacy between the art and its listener.
Each member of the group writes for the band. The following are snapshots of how certain songs came to be:
"Dog Song"
Molly wrote the dog song while visiting her best friend Ally in New Orleans. She was feeling fairly lovesick and lost in tropical chaos. Ally's living room floor was covered in potting soil, small seeds and larger green leaves (which could easily have been made into wings or a boat) and a guitar with only three top strings. With the help of the guitar, Molly's questions came out to comfort her, to tell the fall's unfamiliarly warm night air 'I belongs too', making the Dog Song.
"Soft Skin" Written by Molly
Soft Skin is a series of questions following the first line of the song, 'I've got soft skin, are you gonna let me in?' It plays off the associations between women, their soft skin, and vulnerability, or openness within (sexual) relationships (Molly's generalization). Soft Skin is meant to question the origins and entaglements of the desire for violence in sex (socialization?), as well as the blurry lines between love, lust and gender roles as played out through 'intimacy'. Enjoy."
"Mouth Wings"
Mouthwings is a song about creating for the love you will eventually receive, as opposed to loving the creation itself. It is also about being a mother, or what amelia thinks being a mother might feel like. Amelia wrote this song in her backyard one spring afternoon while the neighbors were yelling and the cat would not leave her alone.
"Sewee Sewee"
Sewee Sewee happened to Alex in her sleep, at least some of it. She woke up in the middle of the night thinking she had written the perfect song, but all she could remember in the morning was, "sewee sewee, we traveled far on this road we're on."
"Animal Tracks"
Alex wrote Animal Tracks in her tiny, wonderfully bright room at Bennington College. Spring had finally arrived after months of cold and darkness. Fresh indoors from a twilight walk, she spent a lovely, solitary evening listening to the peepers near the pond, and to the wind rustling the dark night through the open window. And what popped out but Animal Tracks!
