Mountain Man (band)

Early years

The three members of the group are Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Randall Meath. They met as students at Bennington College in Vermont and began singing seriously together in 2009. Two come from "singing families" and one got experience singing in a church choir. They were influenced in part by Bulgarian women's choir music, as well as artists such as Celine Dion. According to one report, they would sit on the porch of a shared house in Bennington and harmonize on songs they had written; when they sang as a trio, they realized it was "something special." Self-released recordings were picked up by influential blogs such as Pitchfork in late 2009, and they got a record deal with the label Partisan and others. They've been compared to the musical group The Roches. Amelia Randall Meath is the daughter of television producer and professional Santa Claus Jonathan Meath, and lead singer in the band Sylvan Esso.

Touring

While they make decisions as a group, often they divide responsibilities, with Amelia often assuming the "manager role," Molly handling finances, and Alex deciding matters about sound quality in recordings, according to the group in an interview on NPR. They toured the country after graduating from college by riding in a now-defunct car which they named Delores. Their first album is entitled Made the Harbor on the label Partisan Records (North America), Bella Union (Europe), Spunk (Australia), and P-Vine (Japan). They toured with the music group The Decemberists and with Jónsi. They toured in Europe. One of their folk harmony songs was converted into electropop by multi-instrumentalist Paul Duncan of Warm Ghost. In addition, Meath and Sarle contribute their vocal talents to the indie music group BOBBY.

Discography

Reviews

Washington Post music critic David Malitz described their voices as "nectar-sweet" which was almost "jarring in its simplicity" with no distractions from the trio's voices. New York Times music critic Nate Chinen described their sound as "sparse, bewitching twist on Appalachian music" with a feeling of "willful, collective intuition." Their music sounds as if it's "being sung by ghosts", "spectral and spooky", when they echo "folk songs about the forest" as well as "the bedroom".National Public Radio gave a similar account and described their music as weaving "voices into a stark, reverent and unadorned sound that can be hauntingly beautiful."

Other reactions include:

Long on ghostly voices and skeletal arrangements, the music made by Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Randall Meath on their Made The Harbor album – recorded in an abandoned factory – sounds like a cousin to that made in Bon Iver's snowbound bolt hole. Impressively, Mountain Man have created a music from another time and place, a closed environment they're now opening up to all.

The tunes — despite being originals written in the last two years — sound like they could be early-century hymns, or covers of protofolk tunes gleaned from old Smithsonian field recording compilations. Mountain Man's sound would have the listener assuming its members are old-timey Appalachian maidens, rather than coeds touring in a Prius.