The Ghost of the Mountain

Tired Pony—the indie rock supergroup assembled by Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody, starring R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey, Belle & Sebastian’s Richard Colburn, and producer Garret “Jacknife” Lee—returns with a second chapter of love letters to America. These 12 songs follow a film-noir-worthy couple through their trials and tribulations while the band behind them veers away from traditional alt.country Americana to nail down the scenes. The sessions were recorded quickly, and the expert multi-instrumentalists kept the songs alive with a particularly healthy army of backing vocalists, including Bronagh Gallagher, Kim Topper, and Minnie Driver. The night may be dark, but songs such as “I’m Begging You Not to Go,” “Blood,” “All Things at Once," and “Punishment” often capture a peculiar amount of life and joy in the less-than-ideal situations. Only on “Wreckage and Bone” and the album’s finale, “Your Way Is the Way Home,” do things sound like the couple might be at a dead end where Lightbody can’t help them.