STRANGERS ON THE MOUNTAIN: Projecting menace. |
Moss Mountain Project’s Catfish Grouper Snapper may be the strangest album to be released in Portland this year. Which is not to say it’s some kind of freaky noise rock, though it is completely unpredictable and frequently disturbing, like that taste in your Thai food that you can’t quite place.The band’s name and instrumentation — guitar, banjo, mandolin, drums, concertina — might have you expecting alt-country, and that’s not totally wrong, but you’ve never heard a lead vocalist like Tim Ouillette in the alt-country oeuvre, an earth’s-core-scraping gravelly bellow that’s not far from Graham Isaacson, but certainly is much meaner. It’s a legitimate surprise when it enters the opening “Ahab” and despite a couple tunes featuring bassist Peter Hill on a melodic singing lead, it is Ouillette’s menace that lends the disc its aesthetic.
The lyrics and the music are up to the task, however, always keeping you just a beat away from getting comfortable. “Divney’s Pool,” with Hill out front, teases as a fairly sedate ballad, then features freestyle rap from Rich Harmon, completely out of left field, with “all the people up in the club, under one roof.” This is where it’s appropriate to use the term juxtaposition. It’s ironic that Hill’s first vocal after the rap chorus runs, “I am feeling so very comfortable.” I am just not comfortable at all with that.
But it’s kind of thrilling, too, in that the unexpected is genuinely different and well executed, a lot like Zappa, though they don’t get as silly as he does.
They do, however, employ his tight orchestration and staccato runs, and they have a fondness for the absurd, as well. Sometimes, it’s just odd, as in “Four Hundred Pounds,” about a fat guy, I’m pretty sure, who knows “Melrose Place/Is at nine/Beer in my hand/Remote in my right,” and “Murphy Brown/Is at 10/Murphy Brown/Such a fine gal.” Other times, it’s pretty grody. For instance, the chorus to “Sunshine” runs: “I’m pissing blood/I’m pissing blood.”
“Sunshine” might be the best tune here, though. It’s a real barn burner, tight and aggressive, and brings to mind the punk-a-billy of the Reverend Horton Heat. I think this band could get away with a whole album of this western themed stuff, especially since Jeff Harmon’s rhythm on the drums is so driving and rock solid, full of tribal floor toms and precise cymbal use.
They can do pretty, too, as evidenced by the thoughtful and jazzy “Quietly Perpetrating,” which features a nice turn from Paige Harmon on backing vocals. And “Tino” features a fun samba and the rhyming of “sunset” and “nightsweat.” But it’s a song like the R&B-flavored “Highway Eighty,” where Ouillette is growling about “methamphetamine, better keep it clean,” where Moss Mountain separate themselves from your standard songwriters.
Interesting, dark, and moody, Catfish Grouper Snapper is never what you’re expecting.
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Sam Pfeifle: sam_pfeifle@yahoo.com.
CATFISH GROUPER SNAPPER | at SPACE | December 16 | http://www.space538.org | http://www.myspace.com/mossmountainproject | available at iTunes
