Tracks
- Darkness, Darkness
- Smug
- On Sir Francis Drake
- Sunlight
- Double Sunlight
- Beautiful
- Turn It Over
- Rain Song (Don't Let the Rain Bring You Down)
- Trillium
- Quicksand
- Black Mountain Breakdown
- Sham
- Ride the Wind
Elephant Mountain is a strong album. It's a mix of folk, rock and roll, and jazz-sounding songs.
Fortunately, Trillium and Quicksand Trillium is a short jazzy jam and Quicksand is similar thematically to Darkness, Darkness. Sham is another strong song like Smug. Ride the Wind is a good song to end the album on, but it would have been better to precede it with On Sir Francis Drake.
Elephant Mountain is much better album than I thought it was when I first listened to it. I think it could have been stronger if the tracks had been rearranged. Darkness, Darkness overshadows everything that follows which is unfortunate on the first listening because most of the other songs are really good, but you might get the impression that they're merely OK. It probably explains why I wasn't too impressed with the album the first few times I listened to it. The other problem is that there are too many different styles which naturally affects the flow and consistency of the album.
Darkness, Darkness is the best song on the album and one of the best songs I've ever heard. There's a lot of conviction in Jesse Colin Young's voice. Rain Song irritates me and might also have been the reason I didn't take to the album right away. It's not really a bad song but I just can't stand hearing the lyric:
If the world was peanut butter, we'd be sticking by each other.
(How stupid does it sound to you?)
Darkness, Darkness, On Francis Drake, Trillium, Quicksand and Sham are the stand-outs.
★★★★★★★★☆☆
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