Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains

Why There Are Mountains from New York’s Cymbals Eats Guitars is one of the best albums to be released this year.

Yes, I know it’s bad review etiquette to give much away too much too soon, and you really cant give much more away than that opening statement, but it’s not often an album like this comes along. It’s light and breezy, dark and intricate, quiet and loud, hooky and jammy. It’s everything that’s been lacking from so many releases this year. If only more bands were as brave as Cymbals Eat Guitars.

Let’s not get completely carried away, Why There Are Mountains isn’t the most original you’re ever likely to hear, touches of Modest Mouse here, splatters of The Pixies over there, but you can’t help but enjoy a band that takes its influences, wears them proudly on their fitted t-shirts and makes something beautiful, something interesting, something you can’t help but stand back and admire from them.

‘And The Hazy Sea’, the six-minute opening track instantly feels like it should be a noisy, tuneless, Pavement throwback, but it isn’t. It introduces itself with a bang, slams itself straight into your ear-canals, nestles itself comfortably into your subconscious then puts it arm round you like an old friend and takes you on a journey for the next five minutes and forty-five seconds through a landscape most bands fear to tread. There are piano breakdowns, fuzz induced wah-solos, screams, melodies, silences. It shouldn’t work, seriously - it has the fixings of a really bad Ben Folds out-take - but comes out the other end sounding like a beautifully woven tapestry of chaos and wonderment.

And just when you think you’re starting to figure things out, up pops ‘Cold Spring’ four tracks later with its angular guitar melodies that are somehow married wonderfully with a lilting violin compliment adding yet another texture to an already busy palette.

They can also play it straight however, as perfectly placed breath catching moment ‘Wind Phoenix’ lets you collect your thoughts before being thrown back into the heady wilderness of album closer ‘Like Blood Does’, a song which furthers the bands desires to move at their own pace. If it takes 7 minutes to get their point across to you, then they’ll take 7 minutes and what a great 7 minutes they’ll be, where a moments silence is as important as any filled with sound.

It’s such a joy to hear a band create the kind of horizon of different colours that Cymbals Eat Guitars have painted with Why They Are Mountains, and the fact that this is a debut led by someone who is only 21 years old makes this record and band all the more remarkable.