Ian Munsick is an extremely curious character, with one of the starkest dualities in country music today.
On the one hand, his ethos usually feels fresh and inimitable. Wearing his Wyoming heritage on his sleeve, every record he releases is conceptually dense and stands far apart from just about every trope and “country-ism” that plagues the mainstream scene today. You’ll scarcely find a sleazy hookup song in his catalog, nor a raucous beer-drinking anthem.
There aren’t that many artists who can say they have essentially no counterparts and consistently deliver enjoyable, technically impressive output.
On the other hand, Munsick also has an annoying proclivity towards average, underwritten tracks like “Cowboy Killer” and “Dig” that regularly cheapen the Western majesty that he usually brings to the table. Five years since his debut LP Coyote Cry, you’ve grown to take the “meh” with the good; still, it feels like Munsick lowers his own ceiling, straddling between the passive “Hot Country”-listening crowd and his core constituency who are fully bought into his picturesque plainal folk tales.
As things currently stand, it feels like our Wyoming troubadour is trapped at an eternal crossroads between high-concept, rock-infused Western music and twangy pop-country. Both are clearly interesting to him, but his flirtations with the more fleeting and shallow of the two cost him a lot of credibility from folks who enjoy the former.
This brings us to his fourth full-length effort, The Mountain Goat. Only just a year removed from the vibrant Eagle Feather, this dense, colorful product is Ian Munsick’s first independent release since his debut LP nearly a decade ago.
The interesting thing is that, despite that status, it follows many of the same patterns we’ve seen on his last three major-label releases. There are dewy-eyed love songs, imaginative breakup ballads, and gutsy cowboy-lifestyle tributes, all of which are enhanced within the vast mythology of the roaming world our narrator knows.
Munsick is one of the best in the game at creating a visual, marrying his folksy sound with his usual propensity to keep his lyrics ever grounded in the foothills of his home state. If you like what he’s about, you’ll rarely be left wanting. “Winter In Wyoming,” “Earn Your Spurs,” and “My Montana” invite you to the wide, roaming plains where Munsick’s characters earn a living with their hands on horseback, always in some sticky romantic situation.
Building on last year’s Eagle Feather, The Mountain Goat is thoughtfully produced and generally hits that golden ratio “contemporary, but not cheap and poppy” that usually makes Ian Munsick so appealing. From the Spanish guitar on “Blue Roan” to the ever-present dobro and fiddle, you’re rarely left uninterested, even if some of the songs are lyrically a little wanting.
We can’t discuss The Mountain Goat’s highlights without mentioning “Blue Roan,” which is far and away the standout track on this album. Unfolding like a countrified rock opera, the text comes off the page of an old cowboy poem. Wild and wistful, it epitomizes everything that makes Ian Munsick remarkable; his nasal whine feels both cold and yearning as he issues a warning to the boys who date his daughter.
With a runtime clocking in at over five minutes, this punchy track culminates in a symphonic climax of steel guitar and synthesizer; Munsick empties his bag of tricks with slick falsetto runs and shifts from hauntingly quiet to gleefully ferocious. Songs like “Blue Roan” remind you why Munsick is one of one in today’s country music landscape; few others possess the inspiration or the technical ability to land this plane.
Unfortunately, as good as the highlights are, your average Ian Munsick album can guarantee at least two or three paper-thin pop songs, which are regularly pushed to the front of the album rollout.
This time around, it was “Geronimo” and “Love Is Blind”; both tracks sound cool and tease the impressive songcraft that Ian Munsick likes to flex on his deep cuts. However, textually, they strip out the secret sauce that makes him such a compelling figure: there’s scarcely any spirited imagery or narrative intrigue as seen on “Palomino Eyes” or “My Montana.” These singles feel like Diet Ian Munsick, where listeners get a taste of what he has to offer, with the best parts watered down.
As previously discussed, a lot of The Mountain Goat is also hindered by Munsick’s unfortunate attraction to kitsch and dad-jokey isms. “Medicine Man” and its rich 12-string riff should be a huge standout, but the lyrical flatness, where he beats this arcane metaphor for healing a girl’s broken heart into the ground, gets old extremely quickly. After a verse and a chorus, it’s pretty clear that Munsick isn’t going to offer any new insights, and with a four-minute runtime, you “get the idea” way too quickly. The same is true for the cornball “Cutthroat World” and the sticky sweet “Made Me a Man.”
All told, the worst song here by far is “World War III,” which takes all of Munsick’s worst tendencies and rolls them together in one diabolical creation. Only vaguely musical, he spends far too much time yippie-ki-yi-yaying in his falsetto, with precious little real melody. The premise makes no sense whatsoever, just an awkward assertion that if he ever has to “fight the devil,” he’ll do so really hard. There’s no provocation or reason for you to understand why he’s so eager to fight… something. It’s not clever. It sounds ugly. Just a brutal listen all around.
At this point, it’s reasonable to expect Ian Munsick’s albums to be a mixed bag. He’s a technically prolific multi-instrumentalist and a savvy balladeer, and turns in some genuine gems on The Mountain Goat. He’ll always seek to bring the “west to the rest”; you just wish he would spend a little less time on his records mixing the two.
