Mount Righteous are a band you absolutely have to hear. Whether it’s to your taste or not, their peculiar brand of big, loud, twee, self-consciously cute, indie-pop-collides-with-marching-band music is a unique experience in an industry that’s becoming frustratingly homogenised. As such, it deserves to be played loudly and often.
Open Your Mouth is the 9-member Texan anti-orchestra’s first EP, after their debut album When The Music Starts – a somewhat obscure but undoubtedly brilliant gem – and it follows very much in the same tradition. Short, sweet, immaculately-crafted songs after the fashion of I’m From Barcelona, which range in tone from light-hearted to outright joyous.
Album opener “Shake The Rafters Loose” is an electrifying hipster devotional to a favourite band that’s easily the catchiest song on Open Your Mouth. Things take a bit of a dip in the middle, however, and “Circle Yes or No” and “Turn Down That Racket!” feel like they’ve lost something of the charm and subtlety that was so evident through When The Music Starts – they’re by no means unlistenable, but it’s as if they’ve been done on autopilot; some of the feeling’s missing, replaced by extra volume. Mercifully, things return to form with “Sing to Me, Tiffany” and “I Got A Car!” (although I’m mentally deducting a tenth of a point for the obligatory indie use of extraneous exclamation marks) – the former, in particular, is a wonderfully jubilant slice of somewhat saccharine indie-pop.
The second full-length album is due in 2010, but until it’s out Open Your Mouth is a more-than-satisfactory stopgap, which bodes well for the band’s next release. It’s perhaps not the best introduction to the band, when compared to When The Music Starts, but it stands perfectly well on its own merits as a batch of infectious, endearing, quirky and surprisingly danceable pop.
Our Verdict:
Alex Kelly is a blogger and student living in London, UK. 
