Pitchfork

Better known for their Zep (the way you remember Zep, not the way Zep sounds to you now) leaden-riff mayhem, Vancouver psych-rockers Black Mountain sound a more graceful, atmospheric note on "Bastards of Light". Recorded during the same sessions as this year's In the Future, the track originally appeared on a tour-only 12" last fall, but that EP is currently out of print in any physical format, as is the deluxe verson of In the Future that also included the track. Luckily, Jagjaguwar has made it available via iTunes. "Bastards of Light" isn't as low-key as In the Future closer "Night Walks"-- the guitars still crunch, the drums still pound, and frontman Steve McBean is still on lead vocal-- but whirlpools of tremulous guitar tones encircle a hazy, lazy one-chord strum in a manner that's closer to Pavement or Wilco than the lumbering gods of 1970s rock. "The comet has come," McBean and Amber Wells sing in dusky harmony. It's taken 65 million years of evolution, but UK and continental European listeners can now download the song via iTunes as part of Black Mountain's new "Stormy High" single.

[from the Bastards of Light EP and "Stormy High" single; the former out now in the U.S. and the latter in the UK/Europe, both iTunes-only, both on Jagjaguwar]