Raven's 2007 two-fer
Climbing!/Nantucket Sleighride combines
Mountain's first two albums on one disc, supplemented by a few bonus tracks. They're also
Mountain's two best and biggest albums, making this a greatest hits of sorts, especially as this contains their two charting singles -- the inevitable "Mississippi Queen" and the considerably less-known "The Animal Trainer and the Toad" -- and what amounts to seven of the 12 songs on their 1973 greatest hits,
The Best of Mountain. Although both
Climbing! and
Nantucket Sleighride were reissued by Columbia/Legacy not long before this disc, this Raven set is as good as those two individual discs -- in some ways, it's better as it gets you both albums in one tidy package, along with the title track of 1971's
Flowers of Evil and
Bo Grumpus'
Felix Pappalardi's co-written "Travelin' in the Dark," taken from the 1968 album
Before the War, as bonus cuts.
–
Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi