On the Mountaintops

Tuesday night Seattlest went to see the Pink Mountaintops, the Can't See, and Whalebone at the Crocodile. We missed the first band because the Crocodile waitress forgot to put in our order until we had to go up and ask her. But that is neither here nor there.

With full bellies we finally ventured in to see the Can't See.

The problem with the Can't See is they sounded no different then any other keyboard-heavy indie rock band. Well, other then the lead singer's extreme, heartfelt overpronunciation of his "I"s.

But that's not enough to make them stand out. It felt like they had done it a million times. (Possibly because the Can't See features John Atkins of 764-Hero fame who no doubt has done it a million times.) They just seemed not really into it (like most of our dates). They finally showed some excitement during the last song, but it was too late and their set was over.

When the Pink Mountaintops came out our first thought was, "We could live the rest of our lives without seeing another fully bearded 20-something in a cardigan and be perfectly happy with it," as this was the lead singer's uniform.

Pink Mountaintops, the brainchild of Black Mountain's Stephen McBean, are a max rock band with a heavy dose of psychedelic influences and just a pinch of gospel. Their songs had the wall of guitars typical of psychedelic bands but for the most part were fairly short, to the point, and rockin'. They had poppy guitar licks and knew when to end the song before those melodies got repetitive.

Only once did they go into the long rock psychedelic Jam. We would have been happier if they hadn't. Granted, we have the attention span of a squirrel, but the song just seemed to wallow in musical purgatory. It definitely needed to be edited down for consumption.

Occasionally Amber Webber joined McBean on vocals. They were both very earnest and soulful, but when they sang together it periodically went a bit off tune. We would have liked to have heard Webber's delicate voice more in
the forefront.

All in all, despite our couple of complaints the Pink Mountaintops put on an overall good rock show.