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His arrangement choices are flawless. While guitar stays front and centre, piano, strings, group vocals and slide guitar make fleeting, effective appearances.
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Screw the band name, McBean is a temporal writer, and he channels his unique vision into equal parts regardless of his color-coded outfit. It's a bold and brash move that is working wonders thus far.
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A bit more raucous and a hell of a lot more cohesive than 2006’s "Axis of Evol," Outside Love finds frontman Stephen McBean (who also leads Black Mountain) continuing to rewrite the 1960s, with much improved results.
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The lethargic energy of 'Come Down' precedes the smartly sequenced title track and country twanged 'And I Thank You,' Outside Love’s duel highpoints the perfect culmination of its previous output.
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Outside Love is brilliant, disturbing and powerful.
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Outside Love offers up the best and worst that life has to offer, with love and hate locked in an eternal struggle. It makes the Pink Mountaintops the perfect complement to Black Mountain's lyrical and musical heft.
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It’s perhaps not the best month to be showing such unabashed love for Phil Spector, but timing aside, this is an outstanding album.
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MojoThis, then, is A-grade rock'n'roll--profound, damaged, brimming with wondrous dreams. [Jun 2009, p.104]
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What makes Outside Love most compelling is that grim sort of optimism, delivered through a well-crafted sound that is as sedated as it is passionate, and simple as it is profound.
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FilterFor the most part, Outside Love distinguishes itself as a record of singular quality. [Spring 2009, p.97]
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Where previous Pink Mountaintops releases sounded a bit tossed off and crudely drawn, Outside Love is an intricately illustrated affair, built out of druggy walls of guitar feedback, reverb-drenched male/female vocals, and leaden drum splashes.
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With Outside Love, McBean takes this theme on an adventurous journey to surprising heights, and the fully realized sound allows his ideas more room to breathe.
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Outside Love, two years later, is another solid effort with a handful of quite good songs--and only a few embarrassing ones.
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The album’s cover depicts a romance novel on crushed velvet, which should set off the archness alarm. But there’s an honest ache in several tunes.
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Under The RadarOutside Love is more consistent and more ambitious than its predecessors. [Spring 2009, p.67]