From the first seconds of Wild Mountain Time, we know we’re in for something delightfully odd. There’s a little bit of surf, a little bit of Beatles, a little bit of R.E.M. Talking about the production of this record, Tim Rowing-Parker said “I set up a basic home studio for this record so I could catch the songs as I wrote them.” Which is honestly wild, because this album is polished as hell.
“No Sweat”, the EP’s opening track, is vibey in a shag carpet sort of way—with a lead guitar line that would be at home in Better Call Saul. The groove is head bop inducing, the melody is catchy even if the lyrics rush past too quickly to easily grab onto on your first listen. A song for your commute, for getting some cleaning done, or for sitting on an easy chair after a good smoke. Fitting, since Rowing-Parker wrote it while commuting by train:
“After a few years living in the country, I moved back to the city, and honestly it kinda freaked me out. To take the edge off the train station each morning I’d block out the noise with headphones…” It’s interesting how the occasion for a song sometimes births something wholly different from its origin, and sometimes you can feel where the idea came from in the track, even without an explanation from the writer.
This EP turned out to be one of those “no wait, this is my favorite song—no, wait, this is my favorite song” sort of affairs. The slacker-rock chording of “Ride On” with the surprising spread of harmony had me scrolling back to the beginning just to get the whole ride again.
This song is the main tip off that Tim is an accomplished songwriter/producer, the way the song emerges from silence, drums, bass, guitar all at once, launching into the first verse in around ten seconds, tells us he’s not worried about taking too much time to build a groove. We’re in it quickly, and those lush voicings in the vocals happen so quickly into the song I knew this would really be my favorite track on the album. For real, I mean it.
This record really plays with genre so well—there’s an echo of Of Monsters and Men with the big-crowd vocals on Hollow Moon, a little hint of The Head and the Heart, maybe, or maybe it’s just a really fucking great alt-folk song and we shouldn’t spend all our energies trying to “Leonardo DiCaprio meme” everything as being a reference to something else. The midpoint of the EP and the most mellow so far, Hollow Moon still relies heavily on some really excellent drumming; Tim, if by chance you read this review, would love an email to detail your process on drum recording because this writer is, at the risk of being unprofessional, absolute obsessed with the drum sounds on this record.
Taste ‘em both together
they were soft, they were slow
“Never Let Go” may actually be my favorite song here. The warm swell beneath the acoustic guitar, the almost lullaby quality to the melody. You can hear the pub or the theater get quiet when this song comes up in the set—my absolute favorite moment at any show.
Post time-signature change, even if the recording doesn’t get hype and thrash-around-shout-singing loud, I really hope Tim lets himself loose a little when they play this live.
“Up All Night Forever” brings us back to that drug-era Beatles vibe, and back to a solid rock groove after a couple songs on the softer side. The post-song song is a little live room recording thing, a nice touch to end on.
There’s something delightfully 70s about Polhawan, not always, but when it comes out it really makes you want to dance, or maybe buy a wide-collared button down.
Written by Willow Stonebeck
