Through Crooked Aim

By their own admission, Mt. Desolation are an ‘odd and pretty varied’ collection of people. Oscillating around the band’s primary songwriters and vocalists Tim Rice-Oxley and Jesse Quin, the broader band are exquisite players with an innate ability to add the light and shade to initial song structures provided by Tim and Jesse. The recording of Through Cooked Aim, their third studio album, is the first time they’ve all congregated together in the same room since putting the finishing touches to When The Night Calls in 2017. It’s a process they cherish dearly. “Jesse and I both tend to collect a lot of song ideas, either fully formed or snippets, and we seem to instinctively know which ones feel like a Mt. Desolation song. It’s all about a feeling or an atmosphere. And the band itself has become like a joyous and supportive friendship that you drift in and out of over a lifetime – all of us really value it.” Quin explains: “We love records where the identity has a location. Bands like The Blue Nile and Portishead have that ability to transport you somewhere very specific; Nebraska does that too. I can’t shake the image of driving through a snowy road in America, everything has the look of a grainy black and white home movie, and it feels like we’ve got that image on loop when conjuring up the spirit of Mt. Desolation.” Through Crooked Aim has the feel of a record to accompany the listener on epic journeys through strange and daunting territory. t’s a journey that rolls through valleys, painting its own rich, vivid pictures inhabited by nuanced characters looking for ways to keep going.