From the Hopscotch Website

Jeffrey Lewis Silverstein first felt the thrill of playing his own songs in front of a live audience when he was a college freshman. Even on that modest scale, the experience was enough to jumpstart a musical career that now finds expression in Secret Mountains, a six-piece Baltimore group whose music mixes grit and gauziness to alluring effect.

For Lewis, the watershed moment happened a few years ago when he found a kindred spirit in Kelly Laughlin, whose vocals provide the identifiable through-line for a band that spans genres and styles, from subdued death-gospel to cathartic indie rock.

The pair began working together under the name Owls Go years ago, but as their musical vision began to expand, the duo format—as well as the traditional singer-songwriter approach to composition—began to wear thin. They started adding to their ranks, and eventually the group came to comprise drummer Chris Muccioli, guitarist Cory Lawrence, bassist Alex Jones and keyboardist Jake Winstanley. In three years and with as many EPs, the results have been pretty damn glorious.

If the title of the band’s inaugural release, 2009’s Kaddish EP, gave rise to visions of the hirsute and Hebraic, those expectations were fully rewarded: The collection begins on a note of pastoralia that recalls pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd, while the song’s repetitions of “Oh no, it’s happening again” would sound right delivered in the nasal yawp of a certain bearded bard. Overall, the mood was pensive folk, but 2010’s much heavier Rejoice made it clear that Secret Mountains were not going to be Cowboy Junkies 2.0.

The Winter Sessions cassette, released in early 2012, finds the band rejoicing in their growing power as a live act. Kelly Laughlin has proved that she can waft with the best of them, evoking the ethereal spirit of the Sundays and Mazzy Star. On Winter Sessions, Laughlin summons not just steel but outright brass; the band flexes its muscles in kind. —David Klein