Racing Mount Pleasant take their name from an exit off the highway on the way to Chicago. On the album cover of their self-titled debut LP, we’re far away from the city, looking in on two figures standing together on a frozen expanse; the sky is pale, and the entire frame is so muted it almost undermines the warmth of the crew’s music. How can such a vast space hold such emptiness? And what might the two people – one lifting a deer trophy, for some cruel reason – have to say about it all?
Racing Mount Pleasant release their eponymous debut album, via R&R (label home to Mk.gee, Dijon). The album’s opening track, “Your New Place”, sets the stage for an album brimming with intricate arrangements that swell and recede with the charged emotions of the songs themselves. The new song continues to show the band’s dynamism, following early offerings “Call It Easy” and eponymous track “Racing Mount Pleasant”, which Stereogum described as harnessing “the power of big band grandiosity with suspenseful drum builds and a blend of gritty garage rock that explodes with sublime tenderness”.
Racing Mount Pleasant began as a group of friends and like-minded musicians in Ann Arbor anchored at a single creative house that various members of the band have frequented and to this day, continue to live in near the University of Michigan. After an early album and smattering of songs under the Kingfisher, including one beguiling and ambitious album released in 2022, the band reimagined themselves as Racing Mount Pleasant. Now the band are gearing up to introduce themselves under this new moniker, with a beautiful, challenging debut album that draws on each member’s academic mastery of their instruments, but also a spirited defiance of conventional song structures, or even what a contemporary band looks or sounds like.
For fans of Neutral Milk Hotel, Tindersticks and Black Country New Road.
The Fat Angel Sings 