Isaiah True Weaver - "Born on the Base of a Mountain"

More straightforward Indie Folk from ITW

This is my third (already) review of an Isaiah True Weaver album, so if you’d like to know more about the artist, himself, please feel free to look back at my reviews for Good Men Die Like Dogs and Jim Jars Marti. In short, Weaver is an Indie Folk artist in every sense of the word “indie”. His music is purely acoustic and self-produced, but he has exhibited a knack for melodicism and deep layering on Good Men Die Like Dogs and “Judas” from Jim Jars Marti.

Born on the Base of a Mountain is, by my reckoning, his fourth LP in three years. His debut is the only one I haven’t reviewed, and it released in late 2021.

I also want to pause to note that Weaver is also a writer, with his first book, The Crawdads and The Legend of Moosa out this year. Click here for his Instagram post about the book; here for the Amazon ebook link.

This album kicks off with a brief instrumental intro before launching into a cover of classic Folk song “Big Rock Candy Mountain”. The production leans into the age of the song, which is nearing the centennial anniversary of its original recording by Harry McClintock in 1928.¹

I do believe that the rest of the album’s fifteen songs are original material.

With “Big Rock Candy Mountain” setting the tone, the album leans into an older, simpler style, with most songs consisting of just Weaver and his acoustic guitar, with minimal tracking to flesh songs out; most sound like single track, single-take songs. These have a sort of rustic charm to them — and “rustic charm” seems like the point of the album, given the old photo of the Van Horn Butte and Hood Mountain on the cover; the specific cover song discussed above; the book-end instrumental tracks titled “Nature’s Beauty”; other tracks having titles like “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground”, “Mighty World”, and “Oh Dusty Trail”; and the title of the album, itself, Born on the Base of a Mountain.

The album hearkens back to simpler times. With the rise of “AI” and the enshittification of the internet in the Misinformation Age, who can blame Weaver, or anybody, for craving a bit of simplicity?

There are a couple of tracks that have a little more complexity to them, with an extra layer or instrument involved, such as “Do You Remember?” But “extra” doesn’t mean a whole lot when the total track count is still just 2-3 total.

Finally, I have to underscore that this is *raw* — there is zero production gloss. And Weaver doesn’t give the most masterful vocal performance here, largely because that’s not what matters. He gets a bit pitchy when he hits a section which requires a bit more oomph, but it never sounds ‘bad’, in my opinion. Not in the way that the one song from the Empires of Eden album was, or basically the entirety of last year’s album from Joanna Sternberg.

I still think that Weaver could do more. He has the talent to take a little more time between albums to polish and produce something mind-blowing (he’s actually proven this with Good Men Die Like Dogs; I wouldn’t be following him so avidly if I had heard this album or Jim Jars Marti first), but even without doing so, his work is good and enjoyable as it is.

I’m just a fan of deep, layered, wall-of-sound tracks. But anybody who likes pared-back, raw folk will love this.

Rating: Green

1. McClintock reportedly wrote the earliest versions of the song in the 1890s.