Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band -- The "Pretty Little Lightning Paw" E.P.

9/10

And here is the one.
Over the last, I don't know, 600, 700 reviews--I don't know how many of these things I've written at this point--I like to think I have remained relatively unbiased. Yes, I have included the ways I have personally related to these albums as a means to show how they may have personally affected my opinions, but I generally like to think that in all of that, I have still remained objective. However, I absolutely have a deep, abiding love for The "Pretty Little Lightning Paw" E.P. from a well of deep emotion, and everyone I've played it for has crinkled their nose and asked me, "What is this?"
Yes, this is a weird album (it's over a half-hour long, so I think calling itself an E.P. is a bit disingenuous). The arrangements are weird. The instrumentation is weird. The vocals are weird. I don't care. I love it. Here is one of the final dives into 2005 I will make in this series. My apologies to those who are sick of it. 2005 is why The Nicsperiment exists. I promise, though, this'll be brief.
In October of 2005, after I finished my 30-day disaster relief appointment with the Office of Family Services in Baton Rouge, interviewing Hurricane Katrina victims for aid qualification, I knew it was time to leave the cult I grew up in. That previous sentence is a real thing that happened. Anyway, I decided to go visit some friends in Houston, Texas. One half of the couple I visited is now in prison on child molestation charges because my life is fucked up. That's a whole other can of worms, and the other half of that couple is still a very close friend of mine, so I'll leave it at that. I spent most of my time in Houston alone that weekend anyway (trips to Houston bookended the middle of that year for me, in a way). The second night of my trip, I went to see Serenity (the Firefly movie) alone. On the drive to the theater, I began to reflect on the decades of verbal and psychological abuse I had endured while growing up in that vile sect. I was blasting Silver Mt. Zion's The "Pretty Little Lightning Paw" E.P. for the first time (another purchase from Baton Rouge's The Compact Disc Store), and the vocalist started intoning the phrase "Free born/all our children." I suddenly felt a wave of emotion, and knew that I would never raise my future children in the kind of environment in which I was raised. The film buoyed this, as the story of Nathan Fillion's Captain Malcom Reynolds fighting against an immense, seemingly all-encompassing corrupt empire, simply to broadcast a message of their misdeeds to the galaxy, affected me deeply. I made it back to my friends' house, secure and at peace with my decision to leave, but by then, everyone was asleep. I realized I was hungry, and drove around until I found a Taco Cabana. I then watched the end of SNL, realized I wasn't anywhere close to tired, and dug through some DVD's on their end-table. I watched their copy of Diary of a Mad Black Woman, and went to bed at my preferred time, 2:30 a.m. I left the cult three weeks later. So yeah, in this case, I might be a little biased.
Of Silver Mt. Zion's early 00's releases, The "Pretty Little Lightning Paw" E.P. is likely the most experimental. As far as genres, you could throw anything from experimental music, noise rock, post-rock (you know I love to make fun of post-prefix descriptions, but here I'll let it slide), punk, tango--it defies categorization. Maybe that's why everyone I've played it for has met the music with such consternation.
The opening track, "More Action! Less Tears," is a big, rousing instrumental rock number, closed out by beautiful strings. It wouldn't feel out of place on an Explosions in the Sky album. "Microphones in the Trees" follows with something completely different. A Latin music bassline over strange chiming noises, a piano, paranoid lyrics that climax with the repeated phrase"we are the flood," all shrouded in the strange fog of an ancient, haunted, post-apocalyptic forest. Supposedly, frontman, Efrim Menuck, recorded the album with traditional studio techniques, then played it over a boombox and recorded it again to give it a strange, overblown quality. This certainly adds to the feeling of standing against insurmountable odds. Nothing perpetrates this vibe more than track three, the previously mentioned self-titled track. Again, an old bass, presumedly a standup, drives the track, with some type of clapping percussion that sounds like it was recorded from an old 40's television set. The strings pull through mud, strange lights twinkle everywhere, and the song marches on and on through waves of feedback, distortion, and noise. I've faintly damned Efrim Menuck's vocals in the past, but they're a strength here, as he leans into a strange sort of country twang, though if there's one genre not represented here otherwise, it's country music. Menuck's determined, certain vocals are a sort of focus point in the walls of noise, a light keeping steady ahead through the storm. Weird, bird-calling noises, alien warbles start to spill out from the song's corners as it moves inexorably forward into Menuck and backup vocals declaring the "Free born/all our children" line I mentioned above. I think this is an insanely powerful song, but no one else I've ever played it for agrees, so take that with a grain of salt. It's strange, I'll give you that. It reminds me of something you'd hear coming out of the mall speakers at 3 am when you've been locked inside overnight, and there are zombies outside the doors.
The album ends with "There's a River in the Valley Made of Melting Snow," which feels to me like that last bit of Fantasia, where monks carrying torches walk to "Ave Maria," the morning after having banished the evil from the bleak penultimate segment, featuring a witch's sabbath on Bald Mountain. I suddenly realize I have no more to type.

2004 Constellation
1. More Action! Less Tears 5:20
2. Microphones in the Trees 9:47
3. Pretty Little Lightning Paw 10:01
4. There's a River in the Valley Made of Melting Snow 5:08