Climbing! opens with Mississippi Queen, a song so alive it doesn’t feel written. The guitar creates a monolithic presence, the vocal rides it like wind across canyon walls, and somewhere in the chorus, a honky-tonk piano trill sweeps by. Bluesy, hard, and gritty, hits just right.

For whatever reason, I assumed it was modern. Maybe something new trying to sound old. The Apple Music copyright looked recent. But then came Theme from an Imaginary Western, and something shifted. The organ behind the voice told the truth. This wasn’t retro or revivalism. This was the real thing.

By the time Never In My Life played, I could feel the years baked into the mix. Warm tape, thick fuzz, a wall of sound built from sweat, whisky, and soul. It echoed the first track, but deeper, rougher, with that same heart. This is vintage. I could feel it. I had found the source.

And when I finally looked it up, there it was: 1970. Long before my time, but close to the source of something I’ve always loved.

Mountain was Leslie West and Felix Pappalardi. Together they shaped a sound that would echo into decades of heavy music. You can hear their influence in everything that came after: in every slow-burning riff, every sludgy groove, every band that tries to capture this kind of weight.

This is music with breath and it’s different than the sludgey guitar music I sometimes feel attracted towards. This is music that feels played, not programmed. It’s raw in all the right places. It wasn’t made to be perfect. It was made to be felt.

Climbing! is a reminder that behind every genre tag like stoner rock, shoegaze, post-rock… there are records like this. Records that didn’t try to be anything but true. And somehow, over fifty years later, it still feels fresh. Still feels loud.