One of Nashville’s best live indie rock bands, Mountains Like Wax, has made their debut full length album with Before There Was Plenty, the much anticipated follow up to 2015’s highly regarded Tetralogy EP -

“..but with their latest work, Mountains Like Wax sound truly transcendent; a band who’ve reached their full potential through patience and unrelenting artistic ambition, and we have no doubt that their first LP, a work we’ve been eagerly anticipating for years, will be one of the most significant works of next year.” (Philip Obenschain, No Country for New Nashville)

Since their emergence in the house show scene of Middle Tennessee, Mitchell Taylor and Sam Katz have used Mountains Like Wax to apply their DIY ethos to continually crafting deeply visceral songs that address the ideas of pain, growth, loss, and love; honestly and unguarded. Taylor, in particular, has placed his heart on the table as a plea to lovers everywhere to be more honest with themselves as he has learned to do in the wake of pain and loss. Before There Was Plenty is a wiser, more tempered musical vision that is evidence of Mountains Like Wax’s exponentially accumulating potential for wide critical acclaim and the band’s desire to connect further and deeper with their continuously growing audience.

As the album’s track listing progresses, it’s clear that Taylor’s confessions are shifting the weight off his shoulders and also giving listeners the opportunity to do the same. Taylor’s writing foil, Katz, shines throughout as a musical partner as his more pop-driven sensibilities underpin the record with lightness and natural instrumental hooks. The duo is also joined by a host of collaborators and friends including regarded singer-songwriters Julien Baker and Torri Weidinger, producers and multi -instrumentalists Hunter West, Jason Bennett, and Andy Park, who sonically create a safe space around Taylor to grieve, heal, and grow. 

The devastating passing of his friends before his eyes in the Nashville tornado outbreak of 2020 plunged the lead singer into intensive therapy, bringing deeper self-examination and uncovered dysfunctions and past traumas and abuses he had previously chosen to ignore or had become generally “numb to.” The processing of these realizations through song-craft has produced a record full of self-discovery, hope, and healing in the form of honest confessions and conversations with the personification of Love. Taylor chooses to face his emotional hurdles head on as each song details fearful entry into the emotional processes of grief and trauma, asking in A Lovers Plea (Act I), “Are you so afraid... What do you say?”

The aforementioned disconnection was hurting the ones closest to him, but as he slowly faced the past wounds of PTSD, and the deeply painful untimely deaths of close friends, through intense counseling and the vehicle of these songs, Taylor’s process in the release of shame and survivor’s guilt have given way to a new vulnerability and openness. In turn, this process has offered his deepest relationships a better version of himself, rekindled from tragedy. Of his own admission, that previous “block” toward his own traumas was like a “mirror maze” of which he felt lost inside; he knew what the end game of love could be, but he couldn’t access his whole capacity to make contact as he struggled to name and face each demon that was successfully keeping him stuck in what he perceived to be a form of zugzwang.

Singing out lines like, "Do you think that you could give it a rest/ But you make me relive that?/ With all the fingers we point/ Still this wedge has no name/ If we just stop a moment/ We only have ourselves to blame...” Before There Was Plenty is Mitchell, with the help of his dynamically-melodic bandmate Katz, taking ownership and making a sound out of that intentional process. “(I was) looking good things in the eyes and not knowing what to do with it,” he adds as he discusses the struggle to finally come to a place of anchoring himself in friendships and an honest sense of self, “...I was turned upside down and exposed.”

 The record closes with a question: Are You Changing? This is not only an ardent personal challenge, but a question to a generation wrestling through existential thoughts, depression, dysfunction, and war - and in that atmosphere, words to heal by. Before There Was Plenty is now available to stream worldwide, and available to purchase via bandcamp, with more tangible forms of the record in vinyl and other merch being available as the band’s tour plans begin to develop throughout the remainder of 2022 - and with quick placements on Editorial Playlists such as Spotify’s All New Rock and Amazon’s Breakthrough Alternative, the exposure that this young band is already seeing seems to only be the beginning of inevitable growth.