by James Wallace Harris
I discovered Racing Mount Pleasant while watching Best New Albums of 2025 – Ranked by Katie from Cordes Records in Australia. She inspired me to watch other YouTubers report on their favorite new albums of 2025. I’ve collected all their recommendations into a Spotify playlist “2025 Albums to Try.”
Of all the albums I’ve tried, Racing Mount Pleasant is my favorite. It’s by a group, Racing Mount Pleasant. To make it even more confusing, my favorite song on this album is “Racing Mount Pleasant.”
Racing Mount Pleasant currently has seven members and was formerly known as Kingfisher. According to Wikipedia, the lineup consists:
- Sam DuBose – vocals, guitar
- Callum Roberts – trumpet
- Connor Hoyt – alto saxophone
- Samuel Uribe Botero – tenor saxophone
- Kaysen Chown – strings
- Tyler Thenstedt – bass, vocals
- Casey Cheatham – drums, vocals
I’m currently obsessed with their song “Racing Mount Pleasant.” Phil Spector was famous for producing a Wall of Sound back in the 1960s. Spector got this sound by using a rotating lineup of over two dozen studio musicians, now known as the Wrecking Crew.
I mention this because Racing Mount Pleasant feels like a rock orchestra. I love their sound, especially the song “Racing Mount Pleasant.” You can hear the album version on YouTube:
I love this song. I’ve been playing it over and over for weeks. I used it as a test song for my review of the Fiio K13 R2R DAC. However, as I listened to the music played through five different DACs using three different sound systems, I was amazed by the diverse textures the instruments made. I wanted to know which instruments produced which sounds. That’s when I began researching the song and found out the band had seven members. But what really helped was finding this video of the band playing “Racing Mount Pleasant.”
I loved this album so much that I bought it on vinyl. That’s rare for me. I might even get it on CD. The music is so dense that it feels like it’s coming from a giant orchestra. The band plays at a relentless pace, projecting a sense of joy.
Most of my fellow baby boomers are stuck in the past musically. Most of the time, so am I. But for some reason, a few of us have stayed on the trail, hoping to find new artists. Discovering Racing Mount Pleasant is one of those discoveries that makes trying all those thousands of albums over the past seven decades pay off.
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 