Review: Pink Moutaintops - Get Back
[Jagjaguwar; 2014]
Rating: 4/10
By Colin Roose, Reviews Editor
Key Tracks: “Shakedown,” “Wheels”
Music has given us many mysteries: why did The Beatles break up? Why did Eminem lose all his talent overnight? And most importantly, why do people still like rock so much?
Well, despite the best efforts of Creed and Nickelback, rock has always found a way to survive. Whether through the immediacy of The White Stripes or the violins of Arcade Fire, it will probably never want for an audience.
But Get Back by Pink Mountaintops is one of those exceptions that draws that initial question back up again.
Pink Mountaintops have never reached the proverbial creative summit. Their melodies are generally flaccid, their instrumentation is plain at best and their songs are point-blank on the middle-of-the-road when it comes to the psychedelic spectrum.
Psychedelic, perhaps, in the sense that their indecisiveness causes them to try any genre that falls onto their plate. Four albums and 10 years in and they still don't know whether they want to be The Strokes or The Lumineers?
The best thing that can be said about Get Back is that it seems to have stabilized this wobbling pole a bit, falling more toward The Strokes end of things. Its 10 tracks still find time to go rap, post-grunge and cowboy, but the guitar tones are generally tough enough to qualify as the connecting strand.
Beyond this, ehh…it's wallpaper rock. Frontman Stephen McBean meshes well with the rest of the instruments (see: dull) and the rhythm players sit in their comfy couches made up of major chords and 4/4 beats.
On the pink side of the mountaintop, this means that the album rarely dips into distastefulness. With the major exception of "North Hollywood Microwaves," featuring Annie Hardy from Giant Drag, which was bafflingly chosen as the lead single.
At the risk of sounding too gentle, Hardy pushes the already average song off the Grand Canyon, spits on it and leaves it to die in the Arizona desert. Her explicit rapping throughout three-fourths of the song about random sex topics literally sounds like a Cartman-sung South Park parody song--without the parody. You, reader, should be grateful that no lyrics exist on the Internet to quote in this review.
Things never reach those abysmal lows again, but the highs unfortunately aren't that intense. Some kind words will be spared for the pretty, lonely hook of "Shakedown" and the heavier-than-normal "Wheels." But their ability to discern bad from good seems to have died in the "North Hollywood Microwaves" disaster of 2014 and laid to rest.
There's just not enough here to warrant an opinion on much else. "The Second Summer of Love" is stompy and fun if the listener squints real hard at it. "New Teenage Mutilation" goes slightly janglier and it's worth a spin or two. The album even gets better in its second half! But it's not enough, and it all comes tumbling back down that mountain side.
So final verdict: Get Back is highly recommendable for those who want their faith in rock challenged. Anyone else: go listen to The War on Drugs or iamamiwhoami or anyone else combining quality and innovation this year.
Seriously though, when is Eminem going to stop hanging around Rihanna and be good again?
