Track By Tracks: Mountain Dust - Seven Storms (2019)

1. Seven Storms:

Our title track and opener was meant as sort of a lyrical continuation of where the title track of our previous album, Nine Years, left off. Despite the drastically different energy and styles between them, they’re interwoven in the same story. Getting our good friend Mikey Heppner (Priestess) to add flute in the bridge was as fun as it was crucial to adding to the psychedelic balance of the song.

2. White Bluffs:

The goal here was to make it sound as much as possible like being lost in an inescapable desert with your demons. The twang and cinematic tension of this song really brought out the little hint of western influences we’ve let peek through in earlier songs. It also serves as a precursor for everything to come on the rest of the album, from the aforementioned western influence in our music to the bleak imagery depicted in the lyrics.

3. Turn You In:

Being one of the first songs we wrote for this album, as well as the first song we experimented with the synth on (which added a great twist to the second verse), it gave us a huge push toward understanding and further exploring our dynamics and instrumentation.

4. Inside The Rift:

Another song featuring Mikey Heppner who helped out on the chorus vocals, Inside The Rift, speaks for itself as a straight forward banger with just a very subtle drop of ‘60s jazz.

5. You Could:

The soft, repeating organ, the bass constantly on the move, the snare jabs, the highs, the lows, the struggle in the vocals…every piece of this song came together better than we could have imagined. And despite the lyrics stating “You could walk me straight off the edge of the world,” we are not flat-earthers! It’s a metaphor...for what is stated prior to the chorus in the verse; she looks good! 

6. Into The Depths:

This slow build and big end turned out to be a perfect fit for the opening track to Side B of the LP, considering we put it together a week before we headed into the studio. I think hearing it back for the first time took us all by surprise as we hadn’t spent much time thinking about it before recording it.

7. Witness Marks:

We’re very proud of this piano ballad, the way it continually hints at doom and brings back the western theme while remaining a piano song till the very end. The best decision of it by far was getting Martha Rockhard (USA Out Of Vietnam, The Lookout) to sing on it as a nod to good old fashioned duets. Her voice is as beautiful as it is eerie and no one else could have done the job. 

8. Old Chills:

The distant lap steel coming through an old Leslie speaker matches the dismal lyrics almost too well on this track. The result is very dreamlike and heart-wrenching at the same time.

9. Stop Screaming:

An unofficial part 2 of our song Dead Queen off our first album, Stop Screaming brings out the best in Mountain Dust. It was an obvious album closer for us and has become our favorite live set ender as well.