Customer Reviews

Made the Harbor

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

These three voices are amazing. The harmonies are beautiful, the music (mostly original) is haunting and ethereal. Once you've heard "Honeybee," it will stick in your mind like a pleasant memory of a summer day in childhood. It's that good.

The album is almost entirely acapella with some rhythm guitar. The vocals are amazing. Great harmony, great song writing, great timing. Very clean sound. Purchase now.

This album is kind of short, it's not more than a half hour long. That said, it's a pretty good album and I certainly don't regret purchasing it. I'm glad Amazon had snippets of the songs that I could listen to; that greatly helped me to make the decision to buy this album.

The concept behind this `band' is almost too simplistic. Imagine three women singing acapella with an acoustic guitar to original folk songs in the vein of Joanna Newsome or Alela Diane. Thats it. No, really. For me what really makes a song worth listening to, no matter how simplistic, is if the artist can hypnotize you to a point where you forget where you are and all that there is is the moment of that song. Multiply that by 13 and you have this record. Completely surprising and positively stunning.

I have been loving the music of Mountain Man for three months and this album further expands the love. This album has the magic ability to make you feel as if you are in the room with them having a private concert. Their pure voices and vocal style, only sometimes adorned with guitar, can be likened to The Kingston Trio, The Weavers or Joni Mitchel, but IMHO their music is something akin, but modern. The style is simple but the lyrics and harmonies are deep and truly romantic, calling on plain song and jazz, rock references and feminine knowledge. It's a mash-up that feels simple, but is wonderfully complex and new. In one of their early press releases describing the sound of Mountain Man's harmonies one line read: each song is like a beautiful lattice sphere. This description is closest to the way I feel about the music they make.

On their MySpace page they describe themselves thusly: Mountain Man is a creature growing from the mouths of: Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, Amelia Randall Meath.

On their label page (Partisan Records) introducing "Made the Harbor" it says: We made the harbor filled with wind, bellowing sea lions, and sand dollars from past loves, current sisters. What we have collected are chimes in the salty air. Made the Harbor is an album to swim home to, and to sail away with. It grazes the horizon with its sails.

All of the above feels true! I love this album.

David Malitz of The Washington Post seems to agree saying: "It's nearly impossible to find an album with more unadorned elegance than "Made the Harbor" by Vermont's Mountain Man. Save for some very quiet, gently plucked acoustic guitar, the nectar-sweet voices of Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Randall Meath are the only elements present on the 13 songs. It's almost jarring in its simplicity and makes for a refreshing, often entrancing listen."

I give it five stars and encourage you to experience the simple pleasure of Mountain Man.

[...]

I found this band through a link to their website, which had about 8 tracks available. I listened to them every night and fell in love with them to the point where I ordered the import version because it was released a month earlier than the US version.

However, upon listening I noticed all of the recordings were different. The smooth, haunting versions were gone and replaced with faster, grittier versions that, while still the same song, lost much of what made me love the original cuts. I checked the US version and these changes are there as well. Their website has taken down the original tracks and I cannot find them anywhere. Does anyone know where I can obtain these original (demo?) tracks? Thanks in advance.

These women are very talented singers. Judging by their style, I think they are probably big fans of the Alan Lomax catalogue. The Carter Family influence is strong as well. The music is very calming, and after a few listens, the tunes really stay in your head. I think they made a couple of poor choices from a production standpoint though. There are dead spaces at the beginning and end of some tracks where you can hear some rustling sounds or a snicker or throat clearing or whatever. These were clearly left there on purpose, because they could have been easily removed with the simplest recording technology, but leaving them in was a mistake IMHO, as was the attempt to create the feel of an old record by having an intentionally flawed recording quality which another reviewer identified as a hiss. These attempts at ambiance turned out to be more of a distraction than an enhancement of the experience. Without these mistakes it would easily be a five star album, but I love it anyway.

Really lovely songs, but I have agree that there seems to be something missing in them. I don't think it is the length of songs that left me feeling dissatisfied at the end of a song, they feel unfinished. In that sense, maybe it is right to say that they are too short, because I am just about to sink myself into a song and already it is over.

I am a fan of mountain man, and I've seen all these amazing live performances on video. Compared to those performances, this album feels emotionally bland. There is less of that spontaneous, raw spunk. This sounds very controlled, but kind of predictable. It is so much more wonderful to see them live in action and witness that wonderful chemistry they share--just raw beautiful voices interacting, creating textures, shapes and feelings.

Nevertheless, these are all beautiful songs, beautifully arranged and performed. There is a simple, choral quality that feels clean, pure and warm, and make me feel, golly, just good to be alive. I just wish there was more of that fun, surprising quality mountain man gives in performances. Listening to this album was like enjoying a lovely summer breeze, it just didn't blow me away.

I ordered a little known, hard to find CD. I found it here, ordered it and then GOT it within days. Great service. Thanks so much.

This recording restored my faith in a generation that seems to have given up on beauty with honesty. This is not sickening sweet nor faux indie. Honesty and shimmering beauty. The recording quality is fine, don't listen to any of the reviews that whine about hiss or noise. These women laid down these tracks perfectly, a lurking engineer in the room or $10,000 microphones and preamnps would have distracted the delicate beauty that was created here. Buy this. Every track is perfection.