Trace Mountains - Into The Burning Blue - Structures Capable Of Joy

Trace Mountains – Into The Burning Blue

★☆

Released September 27th, 2024 on Lame-O Records

Being derivative is fine sometimes. Take Foxygen for example. Remember them? They were deeply indebted to psych pop acts both classic and contemporary, but they made it sound like a blast. Or Oasis: they’re basically the mid Sixties Beatles, but louder. It’s nice once in a while to hear clear influences and find it comforting, or at least let it be an easy touchstone to get you moving.

Trace Mountains are not the good kind of derivative.

From the beginning, it’s clear that principal songwriter Dave Benton has been listening to a lot of War On Drugs. At least, I hope that’s the case. If he listened to the same influences as War On Drugs (Bruce Springsteen, 80s Dead) and came to a somehow lamer conclusion then…well, that would make him the Chris Martin to WOD’s Radiohead, wouldn’t it?

God, it’s awful, though. Everything has the same steady drum beat, the loose guitar patterns that play insipidly with the gossamer-light synths, the tired faux-weary Jerry Garcia intonations, the baffling insistence that Tunnel Of Love and In The Dark were albums to craft a sound out of. The sole deviation is “Friend”, which somehow makes Alex Chilton out to be Donny Osmond. I would rather the fake Boss impression.

If War On Drugs are “beer commercial lead guitar shit” as that rapist fuck Mark Kozelek once intimated, then what to make of Trace Mountains? These are songs for sub-regional beer brands, the stuff scraping along at the edge of the market, their sole claim to fame in being the cheapest swill around.

I’m not even sure who this is for. How many people are out there saying “Yeah man, I’m into War On Drugs but I wish it would suck more.” Then again, Coldplay does still sell new albums, so there are people in the market for second-rate hand-me-down pablum. If you need anything approaching edge or, hell, shape to your music, you can do far better.