The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-la-la Band (with choir) -- "This Is Our Punk-Rock," Thee Rusted Satellites Gather + Sing,

8/10

At the end of 2004, I graduated college, with a new blog begun, and nary an idea of what came next...except that I would be playing copious amounts of the new Metroid Prime game (2:Echoes). I also picked up my first Silver Mt Zion album, "This Is Our Punk-Rock," Thee Rusted Satellites Gather + Sing,, from the now defunct Compact Disc Store in Baton Rouge (I purchased Silver Mt. Zion's catalogue quite out of order). As I drove home into a strange, uncertain sunset, I couldn't stop glancing down at the album's back cover:

As This Is Our Punk-Rock's opening searching guitar line (which signaled a Metroid hunt in my mind!) jangled out my speakers, to the opening raw choir, to the sweeping, powerful strings, I suddenly felt overcome with emotion. This sixteen minute opener, "Sow Some Lonesome Corner So Many Flowers Bloom," is a staggering piece of work, and the actually well-recorded full kit drums that come in in the final five minutes punctuate an opening musical statement that seems to say, "We mean business this time!" The chord changes are magnificent, with a final shift fifteen minutes in that gets me every time. It's like a different band from the previous album.
This Is Our Punk-Rock is composed of four tracks that combine for an hour of play time. Each track takes its time unfolding, but all have a bit more polish that what Silver Mt. Zion has previously recorded. Track two, "Babylon Was Built on Fire/StarsNoStars" brings things back into a little more familiar territory, with strange tape-loop experimentation in the intro, a more minimalistic sound, dominated by a small chamber of strings, and Efrim Menuck's warbling, high, off-pitch vocals, and his "the world is doomed" lyrics. Indeed, Menuck's vocals are the make-or-break for the listener here. I don't love them, but the musical changes, even in this more restrained song, are thrilling. There's a cinematic quality here that was buried a bit by the DIY production on their previous albums, but now shines due to a very noticeable production bump. "American Motor over Smoldered Field" continues in the same fashion, strings high and heaven-scraping, though it brings back the drums from track one for a nice bit of catharsis (percussion can never be overrated!). The amateur choir from track one also returns to add a little power to the close, when Menuck continuously repeats the line, "This fence around your garden won't keep the ice from falling."
Thankfully, this payoff makes for a good climax 42-minutes in, because the last track, "Goodbye Desolate Railyard," is a quiet ballad, an ode to some old empty space Menuck is lamenting the loss of...which is weird--despite his definite far-left lyrical tendencies, Menuck seems very conservative in the way he constantly seems to be pining for some better past to exist again. Weird. This fourth track is actually two songs, with a second beginning in the final 4.5 minutes. It's simply an acoustic guitar, and Menuck and friends softly singing the line, "Everybody gets/a little lost sometimes."
I got home from that drive, the new year began, I kicked the crap out of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and a bunch of crap I've talked about again and again already here happened. One thing I haven't related yet: On a very late-night drive home from New Orleans that summer, feeling obviously unmoored myself, my good friend admitted to me that he was confused and saddened with his life direction. He really wasn't doing that badly, but he was very down on himself...to which I responded with the final line from this album.
If you're a fan of huge-sounding cinematic music, and can stomach some vocals that are, let's say, "unpolished," "This Is Our Punk-Rock" is not to be missed.


2003 Constellation
1. Sow Some Lonesome Corner So Many Flowers Bloom 16:27
2. Babylon Was Built on Fire/StarsNoStars 14:44
3. American Motor over Smoldered Field 12:05
4. Goodbye Desolate Railyard 14:25