Buck Meek signs to 4AD and announces new album Haunted Mountain

Lead single "Haunted Mountain" is anchored by sweet lyrics penned by Meek and Jolie Holland, who is also from Texas and shares co-writing credits on five of Haunted Mountain’s 11 songs.

The first two verses and chorus of "Haunted Mountain" were written by Holland as a love song to Mount Shasta in northern California, with the final verse written by Meek, together seeking reciprocity with nature. “It’s about being humbled by the thing you’re drawing power from only at which point an actual, fair relationship begins,” he says.

Following his beloved 2021 album, Two Saviors, Haunted Mountain marks Meek’s third solo album. Haunted Mountain is about love, and something other. Something bigger than love, something that doesn’t challenge love exactly but stands in contrast to it. A soulfulness, or a soul-seeking fullness. Meek says that loves songs are the hardest write. “Not break-up songs, but an actual love song written in earnest? That is taboo now,” he says. “Sometimes it can feel like all the great love songs have already been written.”

Haunted Mountain was recorded 560 miles from Meek’s hometown of Wimberly, TX, in the Franklin Mountains – or more reverently named, Sierras de los Mansos. The songs were written in mountains: by cold springs in the Serra de Estela of Portugal, on the submerged volcano of Milos in the Cyclades, Valle Onsernone in the Swiss Alps (where Haunted Mountain’s cover photo was taken), and the Santa Monica range where Meek now calls home.

Since Buck’s self-titled full-length album, his band has remained consistent – Adam Brisbin (guitar), Austin Vaughn (drums), and Mat Davidson (pedal steel, bass on Buck Meek and Two Saviors). In the year or so leading up to recording Haunted Mountain, they were joined by Ken Woodward (bass) as well as Meek’s brother, Dylan, who joined them for the session on piano and synths.

Produced by the band’s own Davidson, Haunted Mountain was recorded and mixed in two weeks by Adrian Olsen, who also performed the sound manipulation via modular synthesizer that can be heard throughout the album.

Recorded live to two-inch tape, the group played together in one big room, with no headphones. In Davidson’s words, “the music here is an expression of a group. I asked for the job because I felt strongly that we shouldn’t bring in someone from outside the band. Otherwise, the only personal desire I had was that we be able to explore space, that we let the music open up and slow down in contrast to previous records – not in terms of tempo but rather overall movement, information between the beats.”

Tracklist:

1. Mood Ring
2. Haunted Mountain
3. Paradise
4. Cyclades
5. Secret Side
6. Didn’t Know You Then
7. Undae Dunes
8. Where You’re Coming From
9. Lullabies
10. Lagrimas
11. The Rainbow