They gave a short set of a cappella songs (barely 25 minutes) that the audience listened to religiously, because this is the kind of respect people seem to accord to this spiritual-echoing-polyphonic tunes.
Sure, the three pure tonalities of Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, and Amelia Randall Meath complement each other very well and it is a pleasure to listen to their sad and melancholic melodies which seem to come from a distant past, although I was thinking at times that they were a little too much NPR material.
They sang their last song closer to the edge of the stage, without microphones, inviting people to get closer, and the result was vibrating and very real.
If the Chapin Sisters do that kind of three-tone-chorus thing too, Mountain man is much rawer, sparer, and focuses even more on the bareness of the voices in an almost austere manner. May be their rural name translates their approach to music, a simple and naked approach without any instrument or computer effect or sophisticated equipment. But they have explained in an interview that their name represents the mysterious entity male, the counter part of each of them, putting the genders to the full front of what they are doing.
They haven’t posted much on their Myspace, only two songs, but they give a perfect idea of the traditional Appalachian folk atmosphere their rich vocal arrangements generate:
http://www.myspace.com/mountainmansquint
They were opening for Jónsi from Sigur Ros at the Wiltern the same night and it is interesting to see that, while Jónsi was doing his own sold-out set in the tiny and intimate Origami vinyl record shop in Echo park, at the same time, the three women of Mountain Man were singing their harmonies in a much larger space.