If we needed any more evidence that Silver Mt. Zion are the most — if not
only — indispensable voice to arise from Montréal's throng of
actionists, activists, street-sweepers, weepers, deep-thinkers, and
post-rockers vaguely collected under the Constellation umbrella, the
Pretty Little Lightning Paw EP seems like about Exhibit D, the
final, irrefutable fact that Efrim's on-the-side side-project has grown
to outgrow the Godspeed! collective. It's on this disc that this little
half-cook'd, half-cocked "personal" vehicle shows their greatness, with
merely a between-album collection of bits-and-pieces — originally culled
together to sell as a tour souvenir — standing statuesque with its
immense artistry. Even when they're supposedly offering discographical
filler, Silver Mt. Zion are all killer. Razing back the rock moniker
(they were the Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band With
Choir last time around) to the more manageable, if discographically
devious, Thee Silver Mountain Reveries, the four-song, half-hour long
set finds Efrim communing with his ASMZ/GY!BE cohorts Thierry and Sophie
on a set of staggering, epic songs. With desolate passages of drone
punctuated by discordant bursts of distorted violin or duked-out
thumpings of pounded piano, these are less tiniest worried symphonies
and more howls of humanity, in which roused caterwauling, feedback
guitar, and buzzing violins stir up sounds to match restless souls.
Rather than courting the non-threatening "beautiful sounds" favored by
the post-rock stragglers, the Pretty Little Lightning Paw EP proudly
staggers through amazingly dissonant sounds. This isn't mood music;
it's agitated, tortured sound born from dissatisfactions with the ways
of the world in the ought-four. With their lusty choruses and rousing
sentiments, the four pieces occasionally feel like protest songs sung by
choirs of forgotten ghosts, these protest-songs the spirited chants of
the spiritually bound, and not the complaining acoustic-guitar numbers
in which one voice speaks for many. On opening, a girl known only as
Aimee guests as Miranda-July-esque carnival barker, calling into being a
committee meeting commencing with a song called "More Action! Less
Tears!", these sentiments setting the stage for an outing that forsakes
moodily mourning to inflame the smoldering ires of discontent.
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