Arguably my favourite of all TOWNES' albums, "Our Mother The Mountain" is a stunning follow up to the impressive "For The Sake Of The Song", compounding the initially good impression with an album altogether darker and more climactic.
Returning again to Nashville and the guiding hand of Jack Clement (and this time Kevin Eggars, too), the excellent cover portrait of TOWNES in partial shadow sets the tone perfectly. This time around, proceedings are altogether more sombre.
Indeed, whilst the strident country rock of opener "Be Here To Love Me" initially wrongfoots the listener, VAN ZANDT's delivery is notably more urgent and the second track,"Kathleen" - later reverentially covered by TINDERSTICKS - shows just how black and glacial TOWNES can get, despite being cradled in keening strings. Marvellous stuff.
However, on a record apparently obsessed with extremes, in places TOWNES comes across as unbelievably tender. "She Came And She Touched Me", "Like A Summer Thursday" and the compassionate "Second Lover's Song" form a triumvirate of his most moving love songs. The gentle touch indeed, stroked by sensitively sparse arrangements; strings and woodwind to the fore.
Nonetheless, it's the side of TOWNES the loner - in the shadows - that really chills, especially during the trio of songs wrapped up in his love for the Colorado mountains and their rich folklore.There's the dirty, betrayal-rife "Snake Mountain Blues", leading into the ultra-slow lament "My Proud Mountains", where a wracked VAN ZANDT yearns to be buried amongst his favourite landscape (sadly, this wouldn't come to pass), but best of all is the spooked title track: suffused with vivid diablic imagery, this bleak folk tale finds TOWNES intoxicated by his lover, the female spirit of the mountain personified, it seems.
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In addition, VAN ZANDT draws on soaring highland imagery in the sombre ballad of a heartbroken girl's death that is "St.John The Gambler" and he exhumes "Tecumseh" ("Tecumseh Valley" from his debut), to fill in more colour - but no less tragedy - to the story of Caroline, the miner's daughter: obviously a song NANCI GRIFFITH empathised with as she later covered it on her Grammy Award-winning "Other Voices,Other Rooms" album.
"Our Mother The Mountain" reinforces the impression that TOWNES VAN ZANDT as (hell,is!) a songwriter of the highest calibre, with a beautifully-paced album alternately fighting his demons and soaring with the angels. Now, three decades since its' arrival, it still takes some beating.
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