Review Score:

B-

September 20 / 2025 –

I don’t quite know what to do with this album. It has vexed me since the day I first heard those beautiful triumphant instrumentals on the opening track, “Your New Place”. It is clearly a stroke of brilliance by the band, which I have only just discovered this year. But for as enjoyable, complex, and engaging this album is, I can’t help but feel it is held back by its inspirations.

Racing Mount Pleasant’s self-titled second album is a graceful white mare dying to race through the open planes of the wild west, but it’s tethered to its influences with a lasso made of titanium. This is an album in which every conversation about it must include a mention of Black Country, New Road. And honestly, I find that to be an unfortunate circumstance for the band.

Countless albums can be connected to the likes of Bowie, or The Beatles, or Talking Heads, or The Cure, or the Cars, or Michael Jackson or Bob Dylan, the list goes on and on. And when that happens, nobody really bats an eye. Because these artists are pioneers of their respective genres. They are the trailblazers.

Black Country, New Road is singular. Yes, they have influences of their own. Yes, they will likely go on to influence many others down the line. But right now, they’re the ones who immediately precede Racing Mount Pleasant in this style. The organic instrumentation, the oddball lyricism, even the vocal delivery resembles former BCNR vocalist Isaac Wood.

But if for a moment, I can pretend that wasn’t the main thought on my mind during my first, second, third and current listen of this project, let me give the band their flowers. On their sophomore album, Racing Mount Pleasant demonstrates a level of musicianship that few others can. There is clear personality, vision, and style here to rival many other up and coming indie bands. “Racing Mount Pleasant”, the midway point of the album is the ideal blend of influence and originality. In fact, the tracks that follow do feel more original than the initial few. BCNR didn’t invent the use of harmony, horns, and quirk. “Call It Easy” opens with an almost lounge style sound. From there, it twists and turns over the course of it’s seven minute runtime in ways I couldn’t have predicted. The horns on the last leg are raw and powerful. They hit me right in the stomach like an 80 mph line drive from the kid on your little league team who really shouldn’t be playing because he hit his growth spurt way too early. For me, that kid was Andrew. Thankfully, he was pretty much always on my team so I had less reason to be afraid. But I digress.

“Seyburn” is bare. A gentle, lyricism focused track with a simple, plucked acoustic guitar. It paves the way for a last track that feels true and conclusive, but without the same bombastic build of the something like “Emily”, which ends with screaming horns that feel like their respective players are crying real tears while they muster all the breath they can.

This reads as if I disliked the album more than I enjoyed it. And that’s not true. The dark cloud hanging over Racing Mount Pleasant’s second album is an over-reliance on a sound that is very reminiscent of another band in the same genre. But that band is a good one, and a unique one. And Racing Mount Pleasant has enough to say that this project is well worth a listen.

Review Score:

B-

Gubb wrote this review. You can’t get mad at Gubb.