Haunted Mountain

Following his beloved 2021 album, Two Saviors, Haunted Mountain marks Big Thief guitarist Buck Meek’s third solo album and first for his new label-home.

On Haunted Mountain, love often assumes a natural form — crystal ball dew-drops, green rivers and grasses, tears bottled. Sometimes it becomes artificial — mood rings, earrings, a pair of jeans, motorcycles and spacecraft. Sometimes cosmic — “I fell into a black hole with the hot flux of hazel” (from ‘Paradise’). Love is a consciousness here, interacting with the lovers, greeting them, watching them sometimes, becoming them sometimes. It extends beyond romance, examining the inexhaustible bond between mother and sun, and asks — is love a form of magic? “When you are in love, it inhabits your environment, animates the inanimate, charging everything around you with a sense of meaning,” he says, “and not just new love; also love of many years.”

Since Buck’s self-titled full-length album, his band has remained consistent — Adam Brisbin (guitar), Austin Vaughn (drums), and Mat Davidson (pedal steel, bass on Buck Meek and Two Saviors). In the year or so leading up to recording Haunted Mountain, they were joined by Ken Woodward (bass) as well as Meek’s brother, Dylan Meek, who joined them for the session on piano and synths. Produced by the band’s own Davidson, Haunted Mountain was recorded and mixed in two weeks by Adrian Olsen, who also performed the sound manipulation via modular synthesizer that can be heard throughout the album.