Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band began life as the more manageably named A Silver Mt. Zion in 1998, and the group continues to use SMZ as band shorthand to this day. The Montreal-based group was initially formed by Efrim Menuck, Thierry Amar and Sophie Trudeau (all of Godspeed You! Black Emperor). Their early performances centered around Menuck's plaintive piano themes, supported by Amar's first forays into upright acoustic bass playing and Trudeau's swirling violin cascades. A debut album, self-recorded on the band's own 8-track reel-to-reel machine (the first official recording to be made at the now legendary Hotel2Tango studio), was released to broad critical acclaim in 1999. The album was largely instrumental, though notably featured Menuck's first example of singing and lyric writing since Godspeed's early cassette-only release from 1995.

The group expanded to six members in late 2000, with the addition of Rebecca Foon (cello), Ian Ilavsky (guitar) and Jessica Moss (violin). This line up composed new material and reworked songs from the debut album, embarking on a European tour in early 2001. The band name officially lengthened (to reflect the larger group, and help rock journalists with their word counts) with the release of a sophomore double album later that year. Rapturously received, the band's marriage of string quartet to blown-out electric guitars, and the increasing deployment of vocals - especially Efrim's uncompromising, incisive lyricism - pointed the way towards the more overt redefinition of protest music that the band would go on to chart with subsequent recordings.

The third SMZ album, released in 2003, featured a twenty-person amateur choir (enlisted from the band's community of friends, musicians and non-musicians alike) on the opening and closing tracks. This record rallied all of the group's emerging stylistic influences and interests - including free jazz, community sight-singing, Minimalism and American folkways - still anchored to a punk-rock take on neo-classical and modern music tropes. Menuck definitively found his voice on this album as well, as a singer and lyricist able to conjure a popular language of scathing social critique and heart-rending invocations of solidarity, without falling into any of the well-worn clichés of "political punk" or treacly righteousness. This unfettered, unbridled honesty and emotion, buffeted by an increasing use of group singing and massed vocals, cemented SMZ as a cult band with a dedicated following. The album also established long-form, multi-movement compositions as another of the band's trademarks; the album comprised four songs, each taking up an album side, each clocking in at 15:00-20:00. Needless to say, much commercial radio play ensued...

Having used guest drummers on their studio recordings up to this point, the band added multi-instrumentalist Scott Gilmore as a full-time seventh member in 2004, to fill drumming duties, as well as the occasional mandolin and guitar. SMZ toured the UK in December 2004, including the first of two appearances at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival. A full tour of Europe followed in spring 2005. Violinist Sophie Trudeau broke her collarbone in a nasty bike accident in fall of 2004 and played these tours with a metal plate in her shoulder and painkillers in her pocket. Another surgery related to this injury sidelined Trudeau for the rest of 2005, but Sophie had made a full recovery by 2006.

In the meantime, Menuck had self-recorded three tunes during late night wine-fueled sessions in 2004, to which various members of SMZ then added. Released in 2005 under the name Thee Silver Mountain Reveries, this EP opened with a saturated, euphoric rock instrumental left over from the band's previous recording sessions, followed by the three Menuck compositions marked by haunting, reverb-drenched vocals and a dark psych vibe throughout. The group has gone on to incorporate most of these songs into their live set at one point or another.

Four members of SMZ, together with label mates Hangedup, formed another side-project of sorts in fall of 2005, composing a new batch of original material to perform at a film, music and politics festival in Belgium. This one-off project was named and billed as Thee Silver Mountain Elegies Play War Radio. This group executed a studio recording of the material as well, which they continue to work on, when time permits, for eventual release.

The full band's next release - another double album - followed in 2006. Their most urgent and fully-realised record to date, this release in many ways completed the group's transition to full-on, vocal-driven, highly charged and uniquely inventive punk-rock. With song titles like "God Bless Our Dead Marines", "Teddy Roosevelt's Guns" and "Ring Them Bells (Freedom Has Come And Gone)", the record captured and commented on our new war conditions like few others, and was hailed as one of the most devastating and original protest records of these dark, outrageous times.

The group toured Europe and North America in spring and summer of 2006, after which drummer Gilmore quit the band to pursue school. Eric Craven (ex-Hangedup) was drafted to fill the drum chair and this line-up toured Europe again in spring 2007, playing much of the new material that would go on to appear on the band's latest record, 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons, releasing in March 2008.

This full text has been written by Constellation, an older biography can be found here.