Review: Grip Your Fist, I'm Heaven Bound - Racing Mount Pleasant

Despite being recommended it a million times, it took me until just last year to understand Black Country, New Road’s 2022 post-rock masterpiece Ants from Up There. Since that moment my hunger for albums like it has been insatiable, a hunger that recently brought me to this album.

Bringing a soft indie rock spin on the post rock genre, Michigan band Racing Mount Pleasant(FKA Kingfisher)’s 2022 album Grip your Fist, I’m Heaven Bound keeps pulling me back, no matter how much I try to focus on new releases. Captivating and moving to its core, it has some of the most beautiful orchestral instrument usage I’ve heard on any album I’ve listened to, let alone an album this catchy. The horn and saxophone line from Reichenbach Falls never quite leaves my head. 

The breadth of sound doesn’t stop with orchestral music either. Holy Hell for example begins as one of the softer songs on the album and then throws in a really crunchy guitar riff that I would have never expected to fit. Regulate is made up mostly of swelling strings at the start, and then moves into a much more digital space, with unconventional effects on the drums and chopped vocal sampling. 

This album leaves nothing on the table in terms of technique, and ties it together with, of all things, negative space. For a band of seven people their songs can be incredibly minimal, often using damn near every instrument in their arsenal just to fill out the texture of a single soft melody. The opening song and second track on the album, Annie, is my favorite example. It starts off as a soft finger-picked acoustic guitar and vocal track the likes of Hozier's Cherry Wine, but slowly builds  layered vocals, string swells, and this ringing slide guitar into a climax that feels miles wide but still so gentle, so singular, so intimate.

The other emotional highs of this album follow this form as well on tracks like Snowing, All at Once and Heaven Bound, Home. Devastating, screaming, sobbing crescendos delivered so softly, repeating lines like "wont you keep me in your heart?", and in the case of Heaven Bound, Home literal heartbroken screaming, tucked away behind soft airy vocals and a warm slightly overdriven guitar tone.

It all ends in what has quickly become one of my favorite closing songs of all time, Do You Think I'm Pretty. It takes all the best parts of their style, all the width and instrumentation with just enough space, and weaves it perfectly into the most mournful love song I've ever heard. The lyrics on the whole album are phenomenal but they really stand out on this song. The album is a declaration of love for someone who has already left, comfort, requests for help, even casual conversation, all given too late, repeating "slow it down" again and again. Do You Think I'm Pretty is the breaking point. The singer tries to keep business as usual, asking for reassurance, asking to slow down, but eventually just collapses into apologies, and the last two minutes of the album is swallowed in "I'm so sorry" again and again and again.

It is a beautiful album, equal parts comforting in its softness and fully destroying in its grief.

Tracks 10

Runtime 35mins

If you like this album you might also like:
Ants from Up There - Black Country, New Road
Twice Around the Sun - Ugly (UK)