The Evolution of Silver Mt. Zion

The evolution of Thee Silver Mt. Zion band - Friday we uploaded a bootleg video of a 2001 performance in Paris and on Sunday, another Paris performance but from 2010. 

In 2001, they were a post-rock chamber ensemble playing mostly instrumentals off of the debut album He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometime Grace the Corners of Our Rooms.  By 2010, they were a full-fledged rock band playing songs off their sixth LP, Kollaps Tradixionales.

Let's now look at a point half-way between those two performances. Here that are in 2006 at Le Grand Mix in Tourcoing, France, near Lille and the Belgian border, performing songs from their 2005 album Horses In the Sky, probably my favorite Silver Mt. Zion recording.  This performance captures them at the half-way point between a chamber ensemble and a rock band.  Very impressive, to say the least.

The first five songs, before the drone that closes the set, are from Horses In The Sky, while the encore songs are from 2008's 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons (Blind, Blind, Blind, introduced as "a new song"),  2001's Born Into Trouble As the Sparks Fly Upward (Take These Hands and Throw Them in the River, an "old song"), and the 2004 EP Pretty Little Lightening Paw (There's a River in the Valley Made of Melting Snow).  The set list and starting times for the songs are as follows:

1. God Bless Our Dead Marines (0:00)
2. Mountains Made Of Steam (18:55)
3. Teddy Roosevelt's Guns (31:49)
4. Horses In the Sky (48:17)
5. Ring Them Bells (Freedom Has Come and Gone) (58:10)
6. (Untitled Drone) (1:13:40)
7. Blind, Blind, Blind (1:23:41)
8. Take These Hands and Throw Them in the River (1:39:47)
9. There's a River in the Valley Made of Melting Snow (1:53:43)

Here's a picture of Le Grand Mix in case you're curious.