It’s Xmas Eve and you still haven’t gotten a present for your mother. You’ve been racking your brain for hours trying to come up with something good, something she’ll like and use and be happy with. Alas, nothing comes to mind and you turn, head lowered, to walk away in defeat and failure, letting down the woman who gave birth to you. Suddenly, that Kid Rock duet comes over the loudspeaker and you suddenly remember she loves that song. You immediately go out and buy Black Mountain’s Wilderness Heart.
In a perfect world, that would be one of the only scenarios in which the purchase of this album would be a good idea. Mostly every song on Wilderness Heart is a duet that sounds a lot like former. Pleasant enough songs to be sure, but there is a huge amount of stagnation on the record because of these ad nauseum duets.
Black Mountain is decently talented, but they need something more to anchor their arrangements part from the two voices. The songs begin to take on this bleeding quality where one dissolves into the other and it gets hard to differentiate between what you just heard and what you’re hearing now. Black Mountain could go far if they learn to use their gifts in more interesting ways.
In a word: Boring
