Kevin Bronson on February 15th, 2022

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Pink Mountaintops has been the imaginative solo project of Canadian rocker Stephen McBean (of psych-rockers Black Mountain) since before Facebook was launched, i.e., the Before Times. He’s gone from the Mountain to the Mountaintops to release four full-lengths (the last, “Get Back,” in 2014), all via Jagjaguwar. Along the way, he’s worked with an army of collaborators in his quest to make classic rock sound really classic.

Today, Pink Mountaintops announced the release of their fifth album, “Peacock Pools,” arriving May 6 via their new label home, ATO Records. It’s a collection of songs that began to take shape during the pandemic. “I’d moved into this cool little ’50s rancher house outside L.A. and was just mucking about in my bedroom studio,” McBean says, “and pretty soon I started reaching out to some friends who were also shacked up and craving broadband sonic collaboration.”

Included were Steven McDonald (Redd Kross) and Dale Crover (Melvins), whom McBean was able lure into the studio to record a couple of the songs on “Peacock Pools.” The album’s first single, the ecstatically riffy “Lights of the City,” was one of them.

“I wrote that one from the imagined perspective of a female ’70s band — like a female Foreigner, or a female April Wine,” McBean explains. “It’s meant to be a fists-in-the-air celebratory rocker.”

Elsewhere on the album, you might find contributions from the likes of drummer-pianist Joshua Wells (Destroyer, Black Mountain), violinist-vocalist Laena Myers-Ionita (Feels, Death Valley Girls), drummer Ryan Jewell (Riley Walker, Steve Gunn), vocalist Emily Rose Epstein (Ty Segall, Emily Rose & the Rounders) and keyboardist Jeremy Schmidt (Black Mountain, Sinoia Caves).

It is Epstein whose superpowers prevail in the giddy video for “Lights of the City,” which was directed by George May.

McBean lays out the plot of the video this way (hang on to your hat): “Lincoln Heights hilltop sunrise riff ’n’ bang sparks spree of vengeance by disgruntled ex-bass player turned cyborg tinkertronic handsome man, Ken The Walnut. Obsessed with Pink Mountaintops’ demise, The Walnut’s sinister plot almost succeeds in a Don McLean-sized wave of rock ’n’ roll destruction. Thankfully, Emily Rose’s Phantom of The Park-summoned superpowers save the band group combo and with some collective post-dress rehearsal concert magic the former low frequency fiend is defeated. Let the rock prevail!”

The Walnut is vanquished in a fantastic finish filmed at the Regent Theater. Enjoy. Fully.

||| Watch: The video for “Lights in the City”