Review Summary: Blind Pilot drifting off course
As a longtime fan of Blind Pilot, my first listen to
In the Shadow of the Holy Mountain was an unmitigated disappointment. My initial impressions of the band’s fourth LP (and first release in nearly a decade) were of a limp and lifeless collection of mediocre tunes - certainly listenable, but a far cry from the vibrant and soulful spirit which once animated this group as one of the finest artists on the poppier side of indie folk in their halcyon days.
Subsequent listens have alleviated my initial harsh assessment to some degree - while this is quite comfortably Blind Pilot’s worst album, a statement made more frustrating by the long wait after an underwhelming previous effort (2016’s
And Then Like Lions) - there remain a number of great songs to be found here. Among the positives - “Brave” is a quite catchy and solid attempt at a rock-ier tune, “Don’t You Know” captures a delicate yearning feel, and “One Drop” works as an upbeat and jauntier entry in the album’s back half.
But, the fact that there are some strong tracks doesn’t mitigate the fact that the overall quality level here is rather uninspiring, especially against the backdrop of the all-time indie folk jams which peppered this band’s first few records. In this case, tunes like “Faces of Light” and “Lucky” (the latter a male/female vocal duet) are quite forgettable, “Coming Back” is pretty enough but doesn’t particularly impress as a sparse piano ballad, and I find “Just a Bird” (one of the album’s singles) actively grating. Even opener “Jacaranda”, which has grown on me a fair bit, feels like a track the band would’ve once been able to churn out in their sleep (and not just while well-rested in a king bed, even while sleeping on an air mattress in a busy railyard).
So yeah, there’s a general sense of frustration which comes over me while listening to
in the Shadow of the Holy Mountain - a feeling derived not only from the relative mediocrity of the material, but also the fact that this once-promising act has now released four full-lengths and each one has been significantly weaker than the last. Indeed, it’s enough to make me start to ponder whether Blind Pilot was ever really anything more than this - a decent indie/folk pop band who happened to have better hooks than most of their cohort. Then, this album’s final two songs start up and remind me that, nope, this band does have something special, even if only in fits and starts - penultimate track “Bitter Water” immediately brings better vibes with its catchiness and beautiful guitar, while closer “Believe Me” is handily the best thing here. The latter is a bit cheesy, to be sure, but its little slab of earnest emotion manages to tap into that cosmic feeling which Blind Pilot have always wielded at their best. It’s perhaps a bit ironic, then, that the closing moments of this album succeed less in rescuing the LP than in diminishing the rest of the material by unflattering comparison, but, ever the optimist, I’ll take the more positive final look as evidence that Blind Pilot still have it in them to reverse this long slide towards mediocrity. That said,
In the Shadow of the Holy Mountain is, as a whole, a passable but thoroughly unremarkable indie folk release - worth a listen for fans of the band’s previous works, but certainly not essential for others.
