The Texas native folk-rocker opens towards mystery and passion, hitting a stride in his band’s third project.
Lustrous vocals and guitar undulating in coordination form a memorable daydream: Buck Meek weaves a recognizable pattern for returning fans. His voice, almost shrill at times, has a satisfaction in being unique. Its soft, wandering glow allures listeners through its laxed Texan drawl come Northeasterner. His inflections are unpredictable: he can turn his voice through pseudo-voice cracks in a vocal maneuver akin to yodeling. Meek most distinctly utilizes his glottal prowess on upbeat songs like “Undae Dunes” and “Cyclades,” singing “There’s too many stories to remember / Too many stories to tell.”
On his newest Studio LP, Haunted Mountain, Meek wanders through his own musings, getting lost on purpose, determined to reach no end, but leave in awe. As the comfortable refrain on “Cyclades” suggests, he tells his stories in fragments, letting his images and sounds wash over the listener – some thematic tides don’t crash back unless you listen to the album a second time. The title track’s third verse features a frame of the aimless lyric wrending Meek has splayed here. “I drank the water of this haunted mountain / Saw a younger reflection in the falls / The river rose around me / I was swept up in an eddy / Drifted a mile and nearly drowned.” From just reading, these words might seem dark, but Meek has a contented attitude towards this, and is perhaps even thankful for something that is haunted. His tone suggests that he cherishes life’s moments and wonders at them. The songwriter’s depth of resonance with this recounted experience leads him to vow in the song that he’ll never come down from the Haunted Mountain again; he’ll never remember, or tell all of his stories.
Though lots of the album’s images and stories, as in everyday life, are ephemeral, one thing noticeable stays consistent throughout the album: an unnamed person Meek relentlessly addresses in the second person. As a devout Big Thief fan, I have to wonder if the subject is Adrienne Lenker. For context, the pair are the frontmen of the alt-folk-rock band and got married in 2014 after graduating from Berklee college of music. Although they divorced in 2018, they still make and perform music that soul searchers flock to. Released in 2023 – are these songs odes to old love, records from the archive or tales of their new relationship? I hate to be a fanboy, but I can’t help but wonder about their connection and ability to tour together after separating. A more interesting theory: the ‘you’s’ aren’t about a specific person at all, and are a method through which to view the world that passes Meek and listener alike.
Unfortunately for the close listener, Meek’s lyrics tend to fall on the cliché side, cutting through the addicting snare cracks of Austin Vaughn’s drums and authentic reverberations of his songs. To Adrienne (or so I’d love to guess) on “Paradise,” he pleads “Tell me how you’ve got heaven in your eyes,” cranking a lame metaphor on the depth of a moment he could dive so much deeper into. On Secret Side he relates, “I’ll never know the secret side of you,” and on Lullaby, in the fashion of a true American school-child, whines in susurrus “You can’t take my sunshine away.” While I hasten to chide the repetitive folly in the composition of these lyrics, they beg for the sustenance of innocence. In calling on tradition, the songwriter finds his own style – it works.
He wins over the listener with his passion and intensity for music that shines through in the way he lets the emotion flow out of his mouth, his guitar. You can almost see him grooving, worming unconsciously as he does during any one of his live performances. With his eyes closed, his guitar moves as an extension of himself, arms seemingly detached, each their own portraits of his satisfaction with the honor of a stage. In a reddit “Ask me Anything” on January 5th 2021 in response to being asked about his stage presence and how his body ‘moves to his guitar’ he responded “I try to think in shapes on stage, like a whip that sends shapes into the air, around the room and back into my chest, colliding with the new emerging shapes. Moving helps me let go of thought and the anxieties that thought can produce.” The guitar floats on stage separate from himself – almost.
Buck Meek’s Haunted Mountain is packed tight with his moist, open sight. He creates an endearing, earnest sound. Dive into the feeling that Meek packs into these eleven songs with the utmost love.
A Sonnet to boil down my feelings regarding the album:
Ideal Unhaunted
Meek musings make realizations all
Opaque; the more beautiful. Get lost-life
A wandering soul’s stillness must enthrall
Through passing through the what which or how strife
Without concern, amounting sweet but trite.
Archival memory must be forgot
So that an eye can see what’s near in sight-
Lest all moments form life a needless clot.
Meek voice to unfasten anything whole,
Slips focus for feeling – monumental trade
For the essence, outlie the common goal
Of sharp remarks, allow your words to fade.
Evolve, music, out the lyric era;
Sound as unsight from a haunted mountain:
