Mount Moriah

Even though they’re releasing their debut LP in April, it seems like we’ve known confessional country-rock outfit Mount Moriah forever. In many ways, we have: The band has already been playing for a couple years, centered around the core of Heather McEntire and Jenks Miller. It even existed with different membership for a couple years before that. They’ve done big tours with the Indigo Girls and Amy Ray, fleshing out their live band with a who’s-who of local talent: Megafaun brothers Brad and Phil Cook, Work Clothes drummer Lee Waters, Trekky Records’ Will Hackney, and Drughorse Collective mainstays like Ryan Gustafson and Jeff Crawford. And they’ve done it all on the strength of intermittent live shows and one tiny EP, The Letting Go.

If this seems like an impressive pedigree for such a nascent band, it is—but it owes to McEntire and Miller’s local history as much as Mount Moriah’s excellent music. Miller is a veteran of bands as diverse as noise-rockers In the Year of the Pig and his solo project Horseback, an odyssey of layered guitar drones with a whiff of black metal. McEntire’s jagged post-punk band Bellafea, which is currently at work on a new album, is one of the Triangle’s most cherished acts. McEntire and Miller previously played together in Un Deux Trois, which added yet another style to their repertoire—C86-style indie-pop.

Mount Moriah is their most traditional and professional project to date. On the self-titled debut, McEntire’s voice has more grit and soul than ever before, as befits the intimately personal lyrics. McEntire’s words speak of tainted love and gender identity in the religious South. They’re sure to have a crack band recruited for Hopscotch, but the real draw is the palpable chemistry between Miller and McEntire, local music’s most adorable non-romantic couple. —Brian Howe