Mountain Movers Bring In March, Roaring And Rocking

Dan Greene was deep in an amped-up daze, his guitar swinging wildly on his torso as he half-shouted, half-sang a refrain that had him getting lost in parking lots and looking up at the night sky. To his left, Rick Omonte grinned broadly, unleashing another twangy round of sound from his bass with the head-bopping, ear-to-ear smile of a oh-so-slightly devilish child. Ross Menze wailed away on the drums, his sticks flying from taut drum skin to cymbal, foot steady on the kick pedal. Krissy Battalene, also on guitar, moved forward, gesturing toward the others as she played.

Greene turned his back to the audience, and toward the other three. Their eyes locked for a moment in confirmation of something the most members of the crowd, packed shoulder-to-shoulder in Cafe Nine, had already surmised: March was about to come in like a lion. 

Together, the four make up the Mountain Movers. Green and Omonte started the group, which has since had a rotating cast of characters on guitar and drums. Saturday night, the band brought a cramped house to its rocking-out feet when it opened for MV EE. Along with Rivener and Spectre Folk, it set an expressive, electric tone for the evening. 

The band’s ability to captivate a room might be chalked up to a few different things: Green’s ironically hipster wardrobe, which leaves him as a sort of hyper-conscious grown-up trapped in a teenager’s clothes; Omonte’s no-bullshit approach to his time onstage (all bass, all the time); Battalene’s big stage presence, built on her instrumental precision and indefatigable playing, enough to raise the roof on its own. The core of its magic, however, lies in the pairing of Greene’s poetic and sharp lyrics with a sort of lulling, hypnotic rock that will put you in a trance if you let it. With his unfaltering vocals, the band left the audience relishing in a mellifluous sea of images. 

Off the stage Saturday night tumbled something that had its roots undeniably in rock, but something else too — not not quite funk, not quite garage-folk, not quite pseudo-pop, but a marvelous orgy of all of them. In the evening’s plunging temperatures, that’s exactly what the audience — and the band — seemed to need. Mountain Movers is a group with an expansive imagination, large enough to wrap a room in rock revelry.

To find out more about events at Cafe Nine, visit their website.