Moving Mountains – “Deathless” (Stereogum Premiere)
Moving Mountains has put out three albums (and a few EPs) worth of ambitious, sweeping post-rock. Their great debut, Pneuma, was recently reissued, almost 10 years to the day that the band wrote their first song together. In 2013, though, the Purchase, NY group announced they’d be going on hiatus, but we have a brief respite from that break later this fall as they’re putting out two new songs on a split with Prawn, a New Jersey band who share the same kind of emotional clarity as them if not the same expansive sprawl.
“Deathless,” the first track Moving Mountains has shared from the split, shows off the band at their most graceful apex. Clocking in at just over seven minutes, this one doesn’t unfurl or build so much as it languidly crawls towards resolution. “It was everything, and all at once,” Greg Dunn sings over orchestral swoops and a plaintive acoustic guitar. The type of grandeur it captures is achingly personal, an epic only in the sense of how every day can be a battle. It’s a headrush of emotions, but one that leaves you restored at the end rather than feeling down. Listen below.
The Moving Mountains / Prawn split is out 11/27. Pre-order it here.