Live Review: Steve Smyth, The Mountains

The Mountains played an interesting set of well-written folk/country rock ballads, jigs and songs, some of which bordered on anthemic but didn’t quite make it there.

Taking their cue from classic country rock and, yes, wearing these influences like the standard hipster flat brim hat that the bass player finally decided was getting in the way of his mojo, The Mountains had some good songs to share with us tonight. They certainly did a great job of warming the crowd up for the evening’s headline act.

When this reviewer listens to Steve Smyth’s albums – his new release Exits, and his 2012 release, Release – a few things come to mind.

Things like Joe Cocker, Tom Waits and even sometimes Jeff Buckley. We were expecting something special from a live performance by the troubadour, but nothing could have prepared us for the intensity and passion of a Steve Smyth live performance. Newtown Social Club’s band room provided a semi-intimate setting for a performance that defies classification really, as does Smyth. Part blues, part folk, grunge and punk, Smyth does nothing without 110 percent passion, as is evidenced by the way he throws himself into each and every song and around the stage with calculated abandon.

Nothing is by accident it seems, except perhaps when Barbiturate Cowboy And His Dark Horses fell apart just as the trio where heading into the song’s three-quarter-time crescendo. It didn’t seem planned, but perhaps it was. To be honest, it was something of a relief that the band showed some humanity as, up to that point, this scribe was feeling just a little overawed by just how tight and perfectly raw the sound was. Some beautiful moments ensued however and mostly the show was a flawlessly executed lesson in musical light and shade, as well as a free life lesson in love and pain.