Last Thursday, Chicago hit 100 degrees in June for the first time since 1988. Like an idiot, I found myself walking around downtown in jeans and a button-up, backpack grafted to my shoulders from sweat, the city's own psych-tinged synth-poppers A Lull's Meat Mountain EP in my ear. I'd spent the week in my climate-controlled apartment grappling with the record, which-- with its wavery synths and clattering polyrhythms and watery post-Animal Collective harmonies-- never quite leapt out of the speakers the way I kept expecting. But out there in that heat, dodging the glint of that nasty old sun, frontman Nigel Evan Dennis telling me to "feel it with [my] heart," well, I certainly felt something.
Meat Mountain comes hot on the heels of A Lull's 2011 twofer, Confetti and its accompanying Confetti Reprise. The Confetti LP in particular seemed, as David Bevan mentioned in his review, especially beholden to the icy geometry of Sigur Rós singer Jonsi's 2010 solo affair, Go, all these brightly colored pieces jigsawed and prismatically reassembled. But there's a warmth to Meat Mountain somewhat absent from the fussier Confetti; it's production's a watercolor haze, and there's some Beach Boys DNA buried deep in their elongated harmonies. You'll hear plenty of Person Pitch in Dennis' elongated vowel sounds and all the samples running up and down Meat Mountain's sides, a bit of Yeasayer and Abe Vigoda alike in Dennis' swooping vocals and the band's tricky rhythms, and the warm pinks and oranges of its washed-out sonics aren't a far cry from chillwave. But grousing on about a lack of originality in 2012 increasingly seems like a fool's errand, especially for a record as warm and unassuming as Meat Mountain. Besides, these guys mostly take the good stuff and leave the rest; just as they tamped down some of Jonsi's more cloying tendencies on Confetti, there's little of Yeasayer's up-with-people earnestness or Abe Vigoda's recent self-serious streak to be found here.
Meat Mountain really opens up in headphones; their dual drummers dance around the stereo field, the zig-zagging synths and samples and occasional saxophone bleat all get teased out. Arrangements stay busy without overcluttering themselves, although Dennis' vocals sometimes get so swept up in a sea of harmonies-- or, on "Not About It", a falsetto to rival Passion Pit's Michael Angelakos-- as to make it a little unclear what he's saying. Get close enough to Meat Mountain, though, and you'll hear the longing in Dennis' voice regardless of the intelligibility of the lyric. "I don't know about the small of her back or the length of her legs, but I know you don't love her," he sings on highlight "Beaches", and that whiff of unrequited love hangs over the record like a late-afternoon haze. I do wish Dennis would step out in front of the music a bit more; there was a confidence to his Confetti vocals that feels somewhat tempered here, and with its melodies constantly bending and pulling themselves apart, the music could have been centered by Dennis' voice, were he not doing so much swooping himself. But all that makes you lean ever closer into Meat Mountain to get to the heart of the thing; it all seems a bit noncommittal at first, but the more time you spend with it, the more the songs' impressionistic shapes and colors come together to form a complete picture.
Meat Mountain's not a knockout; for an EP that runs barely over 20 minutes, there's a bit too much drift, too many overlong intros, and verses that take their sweet time getting around to the chorus. But, far from being a holdover from their prolific 2011, Meat Mountain finds A Lull very casually nudging themselves in a different, more expansive direction. Yeah, a few more ideas of their own probably couldn't hurt, and a little more of Dennis in the mix would be welcome. But Meat Mountain's both too short and too mellow to read as a major statement from a promising young band rather than a brief, balmy companion to all the muggy romance and sweaty shoulders of the months ahead.
