{"id":44475,"date":"2016-04-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/my-mountain\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T07:31:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T07:31:31","slug":"my-mountain","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/my-mountain\/","title":{"rendered":"My Mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI never claimed that art cannot be produced without suffering, only that art produced without suffering is not likely to be very good.\u201d<\/i> \u2013 Christopher Zara<\/a><\/p>\n

The tortured artist is, of course, a stereotype. Plenty of memorable art has been produced without the artist having suffered somehow in order to provide the fuel. It\u2019s just that, when you come across an album like Jeremy Nail\u2019s My Mountain<\/i> that is so deeply informed by its own undeniably dramatic context, you understand how stereotypes come into being; they\u2019re an exaggeration of some kernel of truth.<\/p>\n

Singer-songwriter-guitarist Jeremy Nail came to Austin a little over a decade ago and set up shop playing guitar and writing rootsy, thoughtful Americana\/alt-country tunes with compadres like Dustin Welch<\/a>, The Sideshow Tragedy<\/a>, and Liars And Saints. Those gigs and his 2008 debut solo album Letter<\/i> eventually led to an invitation to join Alejandro Escovedo<\/a>\u2019s touring band in 2013. Soon after, however, Nail was diagnosed with a rare soft tissue cancer (sarcoma) that had invaded and \u201cwrapped around\u201d his left leg. After extensive treatment, including radiation, Nail\u2019s medical team concluded they had no choice but to amputate his leg.<\/p>\n

A year later, after relearning how to walk with a prosthetic, Nail reconnected with Escovedo, and a year after that, this album was born, with Escovedo producing. The simple existence of this collection of 11 songs is a story in itself, but the headline is that Nail has delivered an album that transcends the stereotype of the suffering artist in spectacular fashion\u2014the context is what it is, but these songs would matter regardless of it. With restrained, atmospheric arrangements supporting hard-hitting lyrics, My Mountain<\/i> delivers all the emotional heft and cinemascope impact its title could possibly imply. <\/p>\n

The opening title track rumbles into view with a smoldering backbeat that feels like it was born in a cave somewhere east of Memphis in 1957. Primal and riveting, \u201cMy Mountain\u201d charts the landscape of obstacles the narrator faces along his path and his determination to stare them down and will himself past (\u201cThe spirit grows when the winds of change blow in \/ I might fall, but I\u2019ll get up again\u201d). It\u2019s both obviously autobiographical and well-crafted enough to feel universal (\u201cMy mountain, the story of our age \/ There\u2019s always something standing in our way\u201d). <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a haunted quality to almost every song here, populated by spare, dangerous electric and acoustic guitars, murmuring rhythm sections, and gauzy female harmony vocals, but the main reason they work so well is that Nail never oversells them. Despite the raw emotion of the themes explored, he never oversings; he simply trusts the songs\u2019 inherent power to do all the work, and that understated approach serves to amplify rather than mute their ultimate impact. <\/p>\n

\u201cDown To The Ocean\u201d is decorated with strummed electric chords drenched in reverb, a hymn to rebirth and redemption (\u201cLet the waves wash away my failure \/ To come back new again\u201d). Escovedo\u2019s silky production, whose burnished, echoey quality reminds me of Daniel Lanois, frames these songs beautifully. \u201cDreams\u201d is the closest Nail comes to an actual rock tune here; absent his laid-back vocals, the guitar, bass and drums could be lifted from a lost Buddy Holly track, though they take on a darker, more contemporary feel later in the song.<\/p>\n

\u201cSurvive\u201d and \u201cOnly Love,\u201d featuring Dana Falconberry and Eleanor Whitmore respectively on harmony vocals, inevitably remind of the Jayhawks, that silvery, captivating dialogue between male and female voices. In between, \u201cThe Great Mystery\u201d delivers another highlight, spotlighting electric guitarist Chris Masterson\u2019s arcing slide notes as Nail sings \u201cEvery breath that you are breathing is a river to the sea.\u201d Bobby Daniel on upright bass and Chris Searles on drums once again provide expert support, all precision and no flash.<\/p>\n

Still another highlight\u2014they\u2019re everywhere on this album\u2014comes with \u201cBrave,\u201d a drop-dead beautiful acoustic number decorated with a scatter of chiming little piano notes and Whitmore\u2019s violin. \u201cHard-wired hearts leave a mark down the broken bloodline,\u201d sings Nail from the eye of a family storm. \u201cPushed and pulled, taking sides \/ The price is high for mending wounded pride.\u201d But in the end, \u201cMercy and grace in this world ain\u2019t ever too far \/ \u201cThere\u2019s another way, I just know it \/ \u2019Cause tomorrow will move on from yesterday.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHeroes,\u201d \u201cNew Frontier\u201d and \u201cCalling All Cars\u201d offer more sharply realized arrangements and memorable lines (\u201cAll of your heroes have already paved your path \/ You\u2019re bound to find yourself following their tracks\u201d). \u201cNew Frontier\u201d is especially exotic, with acoustic strums, deep violin notes, little washes of cymbal, and a few gently picked electric notes before Nail finally comes in with his vocal. A kick drum is the only percussion and the violin functions almost like a droning bass; the total effect is dazzling.<\/p>\n

After all this, the album\u2019s finale is everything you could hope for, a grim, gorgeous declaration of defiance:<\/p>\n

\u201cI guarantee you haven\u2019t seen what I\u2019ve seen
I wouldn\u2019t wish it on my worst enemy
The face of death staring back at me
Tell me what else you got\u201d<\/p>\n

The music is all tension and no release, acoustic guitar and violin doing a subtle dance over a muted rhythm section, accented by occasional rumbles of plucked electric notes. \u201cEveryday, I wake and I live with your loss,\u201d Nail sings in a calm, steely voice that\u2019s equal parts grief and grit. \u201cStaring out the window, hear the tick of the clock \/ They say that life, it don\u2019t ever stop \/ Tell me what else you got.\u201d<\/p>\n

Songs like \u201cMy Mountain\u201d and \u201cTell Me What Else You Got\u201d would be exceptional regardless of the context, impressionistic yet hyper-real narratives of the everyday struggle we all face to overcome outsized obstacles in our path. But the fact that when Nail sings \u201cWatch me walk this crooked line \/ Going up my mountain,\u201d he is speaking of his own struggle to learn how to walk again after losing a leg makes it personal, too, adding an indelible layer of poignancy. Graced with exceptional songwriting, production, arrangements and performances, My Mountain<\/i> is a triumph, an all at once gentle and fierce declaration of the simplest, most meaningful truth of all: I\u2019m still here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":32705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[9811],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-44475","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jeremy-nail","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52008,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44475\/revisions\/52008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44475"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44475"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}