Image by Kirstie Shanley
Montreal's Thee Silver Mt. Zion make heavenly sounds in Chicago
May 31, 2008, at Logan Square Auditorium
By Kirstie Shanley
Published: June 2nd, 2008 | 9:20am
Almost two years have passed since Montreal's septet Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band played Chicago. It seems fitting that while Montreal's largest electronic and digital music festival, MUTEK, is taking place, the members of Thee Silver Mt. Zion would be far away from their hometown.
Having a much greater, organic sound than the bands headlining MUTEK, Thee Silver Mt. Zion combines instruments and vocals in throes of passionate reprises. Sometimes the songs evolve quickly into a tumultuous chaos, and at other times end in a fragile, repeating choral arrangement, as in the desperate refrain in "One Million Died to Make This Sound." Often, this occurs within the same long songs exceeding 10 and even 15 minutes, especially live. The songs change form from a lush delicateness with lead singer Efrim Menuck's hushed lyrics, almost like a desperate prayer in "Mountains Made of Steam," to a turbulence so great it shakes the very foundation of the building.
A prominent band on the Constellation label, Thee Silver Mt. Zion also is atypical to many contemporary bands not only because of its size, but also its lack of self-promotion. To this day, the band dislikes making T-shirts or pins that display its name. Instead, it chooses to thrive in the underground with little in the way for the listener to be distracted from the true essence: the music.
Though Menuck was also a main force of Godspeed You! Black Emperor (currently on hiatus), the difference found between the two bands is Mt. Zion's prevalence of lyrics both to express hope and despair, as well as to be almost an instrument onto itself. As suggested by the title of 2003's This Is Our Punk-Rock,” Thee Rusted Satellites Gather + Sing, Thee Silver Mt. Zion is out to challenge you and bring you to feel the same brink of madness.
Though the band is currently touring in support of its recently released LP 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons, its nearly two-hour set delved back into some older material as well as a new, unreleased song, “There is a Light,” as an encore. The main set included another new song, "I Built Myself a Metal Bird, I Fed My Metal Bird the Wings of Other Metal Birds," which easily held up to the glorious intensity of the group's past material.
In addition to being a longer set, this recent visit was not as political as previous Chicago appearances, mainly due to the absence of "God Bless Our Dead Marines." That did not stop a sense of perilous anguish in other songs, such as the title track of the most recent album, as well as "Could've Moved Mountains" and "Microphones in the Trees." Efrim's impassioned cries are more akin to a strange and beautiful bird than of a human being, and, with the accompaniment of dual violinists Sophie Trudeau and Jessica Moss, the songs take on an increasingly poignant sadness.
Though the seven-piece also includes guitarist Ian Ilavsky and bassist Thierry Amar, it is the effect of the orchestral strings that weigh most prominently on the arrangements. Cellist Beckie Foon is paired especially well with the violinists to bring out some of the lushness which is ever-present in the band's songs but builds into heightened crescendos meant to exorcise any demons. Though the band has been labeled everything from post rock to alternative, it really is just the sounds of an anguished symphony on stage, struggling to find its peace.
Issue #35
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