The summer after graduating from Berklee College of Music, Adrianne Lenker moved to New York City. She met Buck Meek the day she moved there, at a corner market called Mr. Kiwi (although, technically they had already played a show together in Boston, so they recognized each other but weren’t sure from where). The two explored the city by bicycle and eventually began to play songs together. "It was one of those friendships that developed extremely fast where suddenly you're each other's best friend," Lenker says. "We hung out every day from the moment we met.”

Meek’s off-kilter, piercing guitar licks and solos are the perfect juxtaposition to bring Lenker’s melodic and stirring vocals and lyrics to fruition. "I guess what struck me as a songwriter then was that her songs all seemed to be really human, and really emotional, and really honest — vulnerable — but at the same time they all somehow had this ineffable quality," Meek says. "Like, all of that human content was serving as a medium for something beyond.”

Soon they picked up a white conversion van, named her Bonnie, and made touring their whole lives. In 2014, songs crafted on the road were captured on two EPs released under the Buck and Anne moniker: one called a-sides and one called b-sides. Both warm, acoustic affairs.

In the ensuing years, Adrianne and Buck joined with Max Oleartchik and James Krivchenia to form Big Thief, one of the most beloved bands in music today. a-sides and b-sides provide an early glimpse at what was soon to come, while standing on their own as documents of a deeply meaningful time in the creative lives of Lenker and Meek.

TRACK LISTING

01. Jonathan 2:09
02. Money 3:57
03. Kerina 2:51
04. Miss Misty 2:48
05. Indiana 2:37
06. Yuki Onna 3:04
07. I Still Hear You 3:26
08. Angels 4:08
09. A Better Time To Meet 3:09
10. Carolina 2:30
11. New York City 3:49
12. Ringing Bells 3:49
13. Row 1:51
14. Wallet 3:42

Texas-bred singer/songwriter and Big Thief guitarist Buck Meek announces his new album, Haunted Mountain, his first release for 4AD.

Following his beloved 2021 album, Two Saviors, Haunted Mountain marks Meek’s third solo album. Haunted Mountain is about love and… something other. Something bigger than love, something that doesn’t challenge love exactly but stands in contrast to it. A soulfulness, or a soul-seeking fullness. Meek says that loves songs are the hardest write. “Not break-up songs, but an actual love song written in earnest? That is taboo now,” he says. “Sometimes it can feel like all the great love songs have already been written.”

Lead single ‘Haunted Mountain’ is anchored by sweet lyrics penned by Meek and Holland, who is also from Texas and shares co-writing credits on five of Haunted Mountain’s 11 songs. The first two verses and chorus of ‘Haunted Mountain’ were written by Holland as a love song to Mount Shasta in northern California, with the final verse written by Meek, together seeking reciprocity with nature. “It’s about being humbled by the thing you’re drawing power from only at which point an actual, fair relationship begins,” he says. Propelled by the pristine chemistry of his band, ‘Haunted Mountain’ is presented alongside a Riley Engemoen-directed video that captures the group’s in-studio magic.

560 miles from Meek’s hometown of Wimberly, TX, the Franklin Mountains – or more reverently named, Sierras de los Mansos – rise over the tops of the endless acres of pecan trees that surround Sonic Round in the border of Tornillo, where Haunted Mountain was recorded. The songs were written in mountains: by sold springs in the Serra de Estela of Portugal, on the submerged volcano of Milos in the Cyclades, Valle Onsernone in the Swiss Alps (where Haunted Mountain’s cover photo was taken), and the Santa Monica range where Meek now calls home – all where his new love was born.

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, 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.

One intention was to make a hi-fi album that contrasted with the intentionally lo-fi approach of Two Saviors, while preserving the intimacy. Recorded live to two-inch tape, the group played together in one big room, with no headphones. In Davidson’s words, “the music here is an expression of a group. I asked for the job because I felt strongly that we shouldn’t bring in someone from outside the band. Otherwise, the only personal desire I had was that we be able to explore space, that we let the music open up and slow down in contrast to previous records – not in terms of tempo but rather overall movement, information between the beats.”

Meek believes that all of the great love songs have not been written yet. In between the lines of Haunted Mountain, we hear that love, in every form, is the creation of home, from within – forever leaving one to find another.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mood Ring
2. Haunted Mountain
3. Paradise
4. Cyclades
5. Secret Side
6. Didn’t Know You Then
7. Undae Dunes
8. Where You’re Coming From
9. Lullabies
10. Lagrimas
11. The Rainbow

Beat Poetry For Survivalists is the new collaboration between Peter Buck & Luke Haines.

Peter Buck was the guitarist for the biggest band in the world – REM.

Luke Haines was the guitarist for the Auteurs. The Auteurs were not the biggest band in the world. They were pretty good though.

Luke Haines also does paintings of Lou Reed.

One day, Peter Buck bought one of Luke Haines' Lou Reed paintings. They had never met before but decided that the fates had brought them together and they should write some songs together and make an album.

'Beat Poetry For The Survivalist' is that album. With songs about legendary rocket scientist and occultist Jack Parsons, The Enfield Hauntings (of 1978), a post-apocalyptic radio station that only plays Donovan records, Bigfoot, and Pol Pot.

TRACK LISTING

1. Jack Parsons
2. Apocalypse Beach
3. Last Of The Legendary Bigfoot Hunters
4. Beat Poetry For The Survivalist
5. Witch Tariff
6. Andy Warhol Was Not Kind
7. French Man Glam Gang
8. Ugly Dude Blues
9. Bobby’s Wild Years
10.rock ‘n’ Roll Ambulance

Sometimes the catalyst for creating great art is simply being in the right place at the right time. For Arthur Buck, the new collaboration between singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur and guitarist Peter Buck, that place was Mexico and that time was the fall of 2017. Specifically, a little town off the Baja coast named Todos Santos, with the Sierra de la Laguna mountains to the east and the bright blue Pacific stretching out infinitely to the west. It is here that Buck has held the Todos Santos Music Festival for the last several years, which he created in 2012 with his wife, Chloe Johnson, shortly after R.E.M. called it a day.

Among the many artists who have played the festival is Joseph Arthur, who also happened to leave behind a guitar - a Dobro, specifically - after his last appearance there. And so last year he made the trek down to Todos Santos to pick up the instrument. Which is where he ran into Peter Buck. That was the beginning of Arthur Buck.

The creative result of this relationship is a vibrant 11-song collection that captures the spontaneity at the heart of the project - right down to the 1-2-3-4 count off from Buck that opens the record - with sounds and styles meshed together in an easy, almost playful manner.

Tchad Blake was brought in to mix the proceedings and the product is the new Arthur Buck - the outcome of a shockingly productive burst of inspiration.

TRACK LISTING

I Am The Moment
Are You Electrified? The Wanderer
Forever Waiting
If You Wake Up In Time
Summertime
American Century
Forever Falling
Before Your Love Is Gone
Wide Awake In November
Can’t Make It Without You

A compilation from one of America's best ska-punk bands on Moon Ska Europe. Taken from the band's first two albums "Songs In The Key Of Bree" and "Barfly" and the "Water In My Head" EP. Those in the know rate this band highly along side the likes of Less Than Jake, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Pietasters, Hepcat and The Slackers.