Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, and Friends - Songs From the Black Mountain Music Project
(K)
Less an album than a document of Zeitlyn and Takahashi's sequestered month alone in a unfamiliar town in North Carolina, Songs from the Black Mountain Music Project (so named for the town of choice, Black Mountain, NC) has the air of a historical record about it, in part, the concept of the album taking on a Silver Jews album-ish vibe, but more so from Zeitlyn's plundering of her Ashkenazic roots (or one so assumes from the eastern European sound, that familiar gypsy or 19th century Pale of Russia feel that is also quite pronounced on Mirah's solo work). Although the pop structures are often kept somewhat simple, in the way I've often found the music of the K Records women (of course a simplification on my part) to be, the simplicity seems more out of necessity than it does out of a conscious desire to be unrefined—another of the constraints of the project being that the only recording devices were a four-track and a mini-disc recorder, and the simplicity harkens back to Mirah's earlier album. Away from Elvrum's guiding hand, Zeitlyn has tended to restrain her music, which I cannot say is a bad thing at all. While I enjoy complicated pop, Black Mountain Music does a good job of channeling Zeitlyn's influences through a rustic setting, the end product not being that far removed from a Mirah album proper.
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