You could be forgiven for assuming that Heather McEntire was moonlighting on Mount Moriah’s first album. Before her foray into country music, the singer had led the Chapel Hill band Bellafea through two distinct iterations, first as a quiet/loud indie duo then as a snarling punk trio, and Mount Moriah seemed like the latest pit stop for a restless songwriter who hadn’t fully settled on a vision yet. That the band paired her with guitarist Jenks Miller, of the form-breaking metal project Horseback, only furthered the impression that this was a side project. Despite their obvious reverence for traditional American song styles, there was a whiff of dress-up about their act. They sounded less like a country band than an indie band playing country music.
Two albums on, they’ve shed the last of those lingering indie trappings. The trio is now so fluent in roots music that it passes as their native tongue, and McEntire wears the sublime twang in her voice so naturally that it’s easy to forget it wasn’t there on Bellafea’s albums. Equal parts honey and brimstone, that voice was the star attraction on Mount Moriah’s first albums, and it is on their third effort, How to Dance, too. But where the band’s previous records were sometimes overly careful not to crowd her, How to Dance gives her some welcome competition. It’s the band’s fullest, peppiest album yet, building on the wider instrumental palette that 2013’s Miracle Temple introduced with punchier tempos, flashier accompaniments, and a little more of a fighting spirit.
How to Dance is most invigorating when it sweeps the band’s easy-rolling tunes off of the front porch and drops them at the roadhouse. Miller’s guitar packs "Precita" tight with one plucky honk-tonk lick after another, keeping the energy up for Angel Olsen, who shadows McEntire on vocals. His terse, blustery riffs drive "Cardinal Cross," but generally he resists showboating, preferring to play off of his collaborators. On "Fox in the City," his guitar gradually recedes to clear room for a waltzing violin, while on opener "Calvander" his brief, tuneful riffs are complemented by woozy Memphis horns, which McEntire’s voice weaves around with the limber grace of a young Van Morrison.
Freed by the extra instruments, McEntire delivers some of her loosest, most soulful performances, even as her lyrics remain consumed by lofty matters of faith. Early on "Calvander," she drops to her knees and prays "to something for some kind, any kind of light," and whatever or whoever she prayed to must have been listening, because she finds it all over these 10 songs. On "Chiron (God in the Brier)," she discovers God underneath a water tower near Fishdam Road. On "Higher Mind" she meets him at the North Carolina fishing resort Oceanana Pier. She peppers her lyrics with the names of unassuming places where these kinds of revelations could conceivably occur: Grizzly Peak, Baker Beach, Okefenokee, Davis Square, Crooked River, Honey Lake, Newport River, and so on. You could lose an afternoon researching all the landmarks she mentions, getting lost in the surprisingly fascinating minutia of main streets and highway rest areas you’d never heard of before (Oceanana Pier really does look like a lovely vacation spot).
There’s some irony in a band named for one of the bible’s most holy sites setting an album about magnificent religious awakenings almost exclusively in small-town locales of no biblical significance, but the everyday backdrops are in keeping with McEntire’s inclusive view of spirituality. On Mount Moriah’s first albums, McEntire reconciled her identities as a Christian Southerner, despite being far from the textbook representation of either community, so it makes sense that she doesn’t draw all that much distinction between the fabled Jerusalem mountain where God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his second son and a beach motel whose annual fishing contest pays out $150 in cash prizes. In How to Dance's worldview, celestial enlightenment can occur to anyone, anywhere.
