The Mountain (due out in January 2025) is the new double album by singer/songwriter Jason Sinay. Sinay has performed and/or recorded with everyone from Keith Richards to Neil Young to Bob Weir to Lucinda Williams, but is best known for his long tenure in Heartbreaker Mike Campbell’s band the Dirty Knobs.
After exiting the Dirty Knobs after 2022’s External Combustion, Sinay has been laser-focused on his solo career. The Mountain, produced by and often co-written with Martin Pradler, is his magnificent first offering of this brave new era.
The first disc features a full band with a variable lineup: Sinay on vocals and guitar; Bruce Watson on guitar; Phil Parlapiano on keys, mandolin and squeezebox; Doug Livingston on pedal steel; Lance Morrison or Mike Mennell on bass; and Matt Laug or Herman Matthews on drums. Separately, these players have been behind the curtain with rock’s best and brightest, from John Prine to Jimmy Buffett to Elton John and beyond. The second reprises the entire program in a stripped-down, acoustic format.
Today Glide is excited to premiere the standout track “High Plains Drifter” and its accompanying video, a song that immediately reminds us why Sinay was a member of a Tom Petty-related band for so long as it is brimming with that jangly, infectious Heartbreakers sound. Where it differs is Sinay taking the song into groovy, cosmic country-rock territory with airy vocals and a subtle twang, not to mention some damn fine guitar breakdowns. Lyrically, he crafts a tale of the old West while tying in his own experiences to make for a song that is as compelling in its songwriting as it is in its musicianship. “High Plains Drifter” centers on an ominous character — “Born to be a liar/ Born to be a liar/ Like me” — who turns out to be the man in the mirror. We even get an explosive group jam to finish it all off.
Sinay describes the inspiration behind the tune:
“That song is about coming to terms with my own sense of good and evil within myself,” Sinay says. “I never wanted to look at evil in my life. I always was like, ‘That doesn’t exist. That can’t be true. People aren’t that bad.’ And then I realized, ‘Well, sometimes, I’m not that bad.’” He named it after Clint Eastwood’s 1973 Western High Plains Drifter — one of his favorite films ever made.
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