Heather McEntire won't go into specifics, but between 2013's Miracle Temple and this year's How to Dance, the second and third albums, respectively, by her folk- and country-tinged rock band Mount Moriah, she went through a tough stretch. For one five-month period, she couldn't even bring herself to pick up her guitar or to flex her piercing, Dolly Parton-as-punk-rock singing voice.
"Depression is real," she declares during a recent phone interview with the Scene. And for a while there, McEntire felt lost within it. In the end, she says she had to write herself out, clinging to the songs on How to Dance and using them to lift her out of the darkness.
The record's profound sense of place — particularly of central North Carolina, the area the Durham resident has long called home — was integral to this therapeutic process, familiar locations serving as a comforting constant through hard times.
"I didn't set out to make this big map of things, but it just kind of happened," McEntire explains. "We were touring, at the tail end of touring for Miracle Temple. And everything, all these different places were little anchors for me, little mile markers that helped me make sense of what was happening. It was kind of like the only sure thing I had were these places that I went to."
"Under the Calvander sign / Hitched a ride to the Carteret County line," she cries with the album's opening lines, pushing past the coastal North Carolina border as an act of escape. Riding the song's insistent, elliptical rollick and punchy horns, she is suddenly defiant and powerful, swearing to God that "those Jacksonville boys ain't gonna find sweet company," making a pointed jab at the boys who step out from the town surrounding the Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune.
Later she's buoyed by faith, searching for a "Higher Mind" in the spots she sees along the road. "Walk me up to Grizzly Peak / Take me down to Baker Beach / Ride me 'round Okefenokee / Lead me into Chautauqua's teeth," she sings amid penitent organ and guitars that stride with steely purpose. But she "meet[s] her maker on Oceanana Pier" in Atlantic Beach, once more reaching a profound revelation at home in the Tar Heel State.
Far from exclusionary, McEntire's geographic markers gird her relatable themes — desperation, loneliness, spiritual confusion — with a profoundly personal foundation, making them feel at once targeted and all-encompassing.
"I really approach lyric writing from a poet's perspective — 'What is like tangible for me?' — connect to that experience," McEntire offers. "A lot with this record, I just looked around at what was right in front of me. A lot of the places and the imagery, probably half of it is what I can see from my front porch and into the woods and the pond and stuff. Nature, it played a very instrumental part. What's so weird is if you don't know what Carteret County line is or Fishtown Road — but I feel like maybe the spirit is there, the essence. Maybe it's the way I sing it. I hope people can see that."
And much of what Mount Moriah — and the various regional and national talents who guest on How to Dance — does directly supports McEntire's cutting croon. The horns (contributed by the likes of renowned trombonist Jeb Bishop) and strings (composed by St. Vincent collaborator Daniel Hart) consistently elevate her most cathartic moments. Angel Olsen's high-winding warble lends honky-tonk grit to the probing mysticism of "Precita."
But there are also moments — like the intricate counterpoints that guitarist Jenks Miller and bassist Casey Toll weave beneath the delicate chorus of "Baby Blue" — that challenge McEntire's dominance. Which makes sense given her bandmates' pedigrees. The far-ranging, metal-leaning project Horseback is but the tip of Miller's vast, omnivorous catalog; Toll's experience extends from Mount Moriah's sturdy rock to brash bouts of jazz and noise. And the band's busier moments prompt McEntire to dig up some of the rasping intensity she brought to the fierce and fondly remembered post-punk outfit Bellafea.
"A lot of the time it didn't start with her vocals," Miller says. "Like 'Calvander,' I pretty much recorded a demo of the whole song and then gave it to them, and then Heather wrote lyrics to go with the song. And so there is more of that kind of thing going on here, too. And I think that that is a result of the fact that we all feel more confident and more capable."
McEntire also emphasizes the importance of the group's collaborative spirit. But with How to Dance, she depended just as much on their unflinching support. Toll has been with Mount Moriah now for the better part of six years. Miller and McEntire have been best friends for a decade. Together, they helped her get exactly what she needed out of this new collection.
"I was clinging to this hope, and I was kind of writing these stories around that hope," McEntire recalls. "And eventually, I felt that hope. And that's why I feel such an intimate connection to these songs."
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