By: Eamon McGrath
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A Silver Mt. Zion - Publicity photo
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It’s a hard thing to describe, this Silver Mt. Zion business. I’m sure it’s not unlike being in the middle of an unwanted presidency (something which, mind you, as a Canadian citizen, I would know only as a “prime ministership”). But thankfully, watching A Silver Mt. Zion and Midwest heroine Carla Bozulich live is about twenty thousand times more pleasurable than dealing with an illegally elected monkey.
Hey, I heard this first-hand from HowWasTheShow.com’s own David de Young, months ago, and I took his sentiments as the general attitude of the American people. It’s okay, you guys, because Canada is a wonderful place—you’re all welcome here, after all, and it produces wonderful bands; most notably the decorated Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the archetypal post-rock group who predated all of the current flurry of hype surrounding Montréal, and now, its offshoot band, A Silver Mt. Zion, which rocks out with just about the same amount of jet fuel fury and rustic elegance.
But Carla Bozulich is the real connection to the Midwest and Minneapolis, as she was in the Geraldine Fibbers, a wonderful alt-country act with current Wilco guitar wankster Nels Cline. Cline is an amazing addition to any band—and I personally think his guitar playing is unparalleled, rivaled by no one, ever—but Bozulich delivers enough power and sonic strength to make it on her own. At Edmonton’s Sidetrack Café, Bozulich swamped the crowd with a wash and a squall of red light, feedback, computer-generated tones, and field recordings, which showed Godspeed’s influence, but did not either exploit it or render it obsolete or redundant.
Bozulich is a pro, and there’s only one way to say it. She shows her relevance and her influence by standing over her pedalboard like some kind of medieval gargoyle, made of stone, and just as capable of defending the noise rock turf. She injects her otherwise Stars of the Lid/Deathprod/Godspeed-influenced squelch with a healthy dose of gospel, folk, and soul, which creates a swirling, cosmic musical effect, channeling everyone from Otis Redding, Steve Reich, Lester Bangs, Alan Sparhawk, Muddy Waters, Nate Young and Joni Mitchell under one gigantic cacophonic umbrella.
By the time Bozulich began pounding out the tribal rhythms of her cover of Low’s “Pissing,” I was well on my way to thinking that this was Edmonton’s show of the year. Bozulich closed with the title track off of her newest release, Evangelista, showcasing just the cross-marathon of musical styles that has become her trademark, and plucking bits and pieces from just about every musical movement of the last 20 years to overwhelm the confused crowd with a sound that was all-encompassing, jovial, and diverse. She screamed and shrieked, hunched over her foot pedal-controlled tape player, and throughout the song’s wall of noise, the loop started and stopped about seven times, giving the crowd enough time to barely catch its breath. The result was one of the most powerful live rock and roll moments of the year, and I challenge anyone in my city to think differently. There’s hope out there, folks.
And then, the wondrous miracle that is A Silver Mt. Zion took to the stage, and shrugged, skipped and swayed about before actually mustering up enough determination to get down to business. Godspeed mainman and Silver Mt. Zion championeer Efrim Menuck trodded like a farmless horse as he adjusted the tuning on his guitars and tweaked his meticulously precise tremolo box, which had already comfortably found a place at the top of his massive tube amplifier. And then, like a breath of God, they subjected us to about an hour and a half of the most glorious musical sacrifice I have ever heard.
Because seeing A Silver Mt Zion live falls just relatively short of a religious experience—I remember my mom taking me to church when I was about 11 years old and feeling bored out of my skull, but feeling completely at one with the universe at the foot of this stage—and their lyrical subject matter regards as many topics as the state of Canadian politics, the state of the state of Israel, and the state of the world as a whole, their live show becomes completely overwhelming and all-encompassing.
The only way to describe this sound is to picture oneself standing beneath a massive wave—probably a good 13 stories high—and imagining the feeling of having one’s body tossed and turned, flung about, and swiveled on some fictitious fulcrum. This is the fragile perfection of A Silver Mt Zion, Canada’s champions of the post-post rock sound and style.
But the thing about A Silver Mt Zion that separates them from Godspeed is just how song-y they are; whereas Godspeed would plummet the crowd into the abyss of improvised exploration, Silver Mt Zion offer meticulously crafted, perfected songs, thought out and expressive, with “lyrics.” Oh my. Godspeed never did touch those, except in their every-once-in-awhile-included field recordings about the end of the world.
And for Silver Mt. Zion, it’s all the better. Godspeed showed us the sound of a world caving in on itself, but A Silver Mt. Zion show us the sound of a house of cards falling down in a stiff wind; a sound that is relatively less dramatic, but also infinitely more so, depending on the speed at which you play the tape in rewind.
One thing’s for sure: the iconoclasm which has become Efrim Menuck, mainman of both Godspeed and A Silver Mt. Zion, is a force that has proven itself incapable to be reckoned with since the release of F#A#∞, Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s first genre-defining record. He’s a musical machine, and he has the backing of an absolutely incredible label—the Constellation Records collective—to firmly plant his feet into the ever-fertilizing avant-garde soil.
Location Info:
Sidetrack Café
Artist Info: A Silver Mt. Zion, Carla Bozulich
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