In 2005 the ever-revolving lineup of Thee Silver Mt. Zion briefly settled and released “Hang On to Each Other” as part of Horses in the Sky. Taking the “campfire song” descriptor quite literally, the band recorded the track around a campfire, which can be heard crackling away in the background. It’s mostly a vocal piece, aside from the rasping harmonium planted firmly in the distance. Thee Silver Mt. Zion loosely compartmentalized sections of Horses in the Sky when writing notes on the record, with “Hang On to Each Other” bracketed in the “love songs” portion. The original has an earthy, agrarian texture to it—a feeling eradicated on these two new versions of the track, which are about as close as this band will presumably ever come to producing a club banger. “The chords to that tune are like house music chords,” they claim, explaining the desire to suddenly get their arpeggiator on.
Something that’s clear from the outset of the first version of the song, retitled “Any Fucking Thing You Love”, is that this isn’t some jokey dalliance with dance music. Nor is it coming from a place of naivety. “Most important thing = No irony,” they write. “Because we love that kind of music, and impromptu dance parties, too.” It’s an unabashedly nostalgic work based around zigzagging analog synth patterns and an ancient drum machine, topped off by a euphoric club diva vocal from Ariel Engle of AroarA. Both versions of the song exceed 10 minutes, but there’s a feel for pacing that stops it from toppling into overkill. There’s nothing here that suggests Thee Silver Mt. Zion have an affinity for current developments in this field—if anything, it closely resembles the point where bands such as Primal Scream laid down their guitars circa 1990 and headed out onto the dancefloor, albeit with an overriding feeling that this is a more temporary arrangement.
The better of the two versions is “Birds Toss Precious Flowers”, mainly because it has a darker, nastier edge to it. Here, Thee Silver Mt. Zion get close to filtering their familiar sound through an overtly electronic template. The keyboards are firmly set to distress when the song begins, but a more tender underbelly emerges as it progresses, edging toward that part of clubland that’s less about nihilistic “losing yourself” thrills and more about getting in touch with feelings. Engle’s vocal makes more sense here, often dipping close to melancholy as analog sounds grind and pulse behind her. If “Any Fucking Thing You Love” is their “Loaded”, “Birds Toss Precious Flowers” is their XTRMNTR, bringing with it a huge industrial grind that suggests some of the visceral oppression of Thee Silver Mt. Zion tracks like “Take Away These Early Grave Blues” from last year’s Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything.
There are usually channels of optimistic thought that surface in Thee Silver Mt. Zion records, as Pitchfork’s Stuart Berman noted in his review of Fuck Off Get Free. In a sense this release isn’t so different in mood from their other work, bringing in equal shades of light and dark, and seeing hope amid all the dreams tossed carelessly to the roadside. It’s just that the tools used here are very different, to the point where it’s easy to feel like you’ve been transported to an alien place. Something Hang On to Each Other demonstrates, perhaps unwittingly, is how hard it is for musicians to let go of the core ideas that guide them, even when branching out in this manner. Still, there’s a strange comfort in seeing this band work this way, bringing their strong sense of dynamics into a different sphere in a move that’s both bold and—a word not often associated with Thee Silver Mt. Zion—fun.
