Mountain Movers Pink Skies

"Freeway" kicks off "Pink Skies", the seventh album from New Haven quartet Mountain Movers in mid-jam, head down in a motorik, kosmiche choogle. It's a disorienting way to begin, like stumbling into the wrong practice space while a band is rehearsing, but The Movers pull it off, quickly shrugging off any worries with the soft sting of guitarist Kryssi Battalene's fluttering leads. The band settles into the groove immediately and rides it until almost imperceptibly ratcheting up the intensity toward a feedback-drenched ending seven minutes later. "Pink Skies" comes closest to capturing what makes the Mountain Movers such a thrilling live band, padding the instrumental passages of their primordial psychedelia with lumbering numbers like "Snow Drift" or "My Eyes Are Always Heavy", that stumble forward lead-footed, soaked in a cacophonous clamour with songwriter/guitarist Dan Greene's lyrics floating atop like couplets of magical realism. "Pink Skies" coalesces midway through with long-form jammer "The Other Side of Today", an epic near-twelve minute masterclass in modern, improvised guitar music; the rhythm section of drummer Ross Menze & bassist Rick Omonte sizzles like an acid-fried sunset, and Battalene showcases what makes her one of the most enchanting guitarists in the game right now (ask a "head", they'll tell ya). A player able to vacillate between low-key solos that crackle to head-splitting, ear-piercing noise, riding that ever-so-thin line between expertly controlled feedback & chaotic discord. The album's final two tracks "This City" and "Heavenly Forest" blend so seamlessly into one another that all of "Pink Skies" second side feels like one long piece of elemental sonic alchemy.