I was duped. I probably confused Lexie Mountain Boys with Blitzen Trapper or some such Southern rock revivalist band with beards and twangs. Turns out I was right about the beards, but Lexie Mountain Boys are far from anything I ever could’ve predicted. Turns out they are a Baltimore troupe of a capella performance artists who are HILARIOUS and gross and amazingly weird all at once. Just goes to show you that you should never judge a band by its name.
All the same, it seems that the LMB records don’t hold up so well without the visual accompaniment that is so delightfully indescribable as to make your brain convulse like a mound of jello on a tractor trailer bed. Not so with Lexie Mountain’s other project, Crazy Dreams Band, whose debut absolutely cooks you rotten. In this dance-rock mold, Lexie cuts an imposing, Patti Smith-like figure of mightiness. She’s still very funny and random, but there’s a gutsyness to her nihilism that bears repeating. The muscular bass/keyboard/drums setup gives her plenty to pump her fists through, and the manic energy that results is contagious.
It’s a loose feel all the way through, but each song has its own distinct character and drive that keeps things fascinating and fun. The first track, "Four Winds of the Owl," is a new wave anthem about “the talking drum and the unseen hand” that is as pleasingly cluttered as it is geekily prog. "Asian Rollers" is a moaning, marching dirge."Separate Ways," perhaps the strongest track, is a muscle-bound jock jam for a hockey game on jutted ice, with a potent display of singing flush with the melody done right. "Night Crawler" is the epic of the bunch and perhaps the danciest, with its contrapuntal rhythmic procession and sauce-splasher synth squiggles and chanted vocals. Finally, "Exhaustion" is the closest to drummer Nate Nelson’s other band Religious Knives, as it is a grim and foreboding progression, where Lexie sounds most like Diamanda Galas, sing-screaming “I found a way, it’s a chainsaw!” and the whole mood of descent-into-madness mounting dramatically till it dissolves into mouth harp, static, then silence.
Unlike her other band’s moniker, this one holds true to its promise, and what really keeps it apart from other ethereal experimental dance bands of late is its sense of humor; even at its direst, it will make you smile. If the unreleased track on Lexie Mountain’s MySpace page is any indication, this conglomerate warrants further exploration. This is wild ‘n’ free, showering fur clump music of the highest order.
1. Four Winds of the Owl
2. Asian Rollers
3. Separate Ways
4. Night Crawler
5. Exhaustion