11.) The Wounded Beat - Mombi (Top 20 Albums of 2011)

The Wounded Beat

Mombi

Own Records.

Original SCQ Review.

On the morning I left for Sauble Beach, my friend texted me some choice lyrics from Mombi’s ‘Cascade Cliffs’. By doing so he’d incepted my mind with the song’s aching undertow, which followed me over my hour-long wait at the bus station, another six hours as I traveled to Hamilton, and the time I spent wandering that city’s corridors waiting for my ride. Loud, open-window rock songs and laughter overtook our car trip but when we arrived to the coast, well after dark, ‘Cascade Cliffs’ returned to me.

A melancholic heart the size of The Wounded Beat is difficult to fully shake. It scales over the listener like a slate-grey cloud and cloaks us in thick ambient mists (‘Monsoon’, ‘The Misunderstanding’). Those impenetrable tracks armed in four-by-four beats offer a bittersweet contrast to Mombi’s more acoustic fare, with ‘Glowing Beatdown’ and ‘More Coal For the Miners and More Meals To Be Given Out’ encompassing the record’s vast plain of introspection. What stands on its own as a solid album is deepened greatly by well-known names guiding The Wounded Beat’s sound: Keith Kenniff (Helios) on production duties and Taylor Deupree, who mastered the disc. With such a crack team collaborating here, it’s no wonder even the lesser highlights on Mombi’s debut manage to cling to our memories so resolutely. A beautiful heartbreak of a record.


Mombi - The Wounded Beat