Mountains for Clouds – Some People Buy Scenery Like This

If you had asked me a few hours ago how to describe Mountain For Clouds’ new six song EP, Some People Buy Scenery Like This, in one word, I would’ve said “harmless.” It’s not really a great descriptor, but that’s how I felt (and, in some ways, still do).

You see, this Chicago three piece has carefully crafted an atmospheric, shimmering, almost exclusively instrumental styled EP. It’s soft, soothing and flowing but not always the most captivating which is both its strong point and biggest failure. It means that the album can easily be thrown on as background music but tends to just stay there instead of becoming anything more.

When I first listened to it, I kind of shoved it to the side – ignoring it for a while. A week or so later I threw it on again and enjoyed it a bit more; but the twenty-six minute album took almost an hour to play as I continually paused it to play a video or another song on my laptop. This is what Some People Buy Scenery Like This was perfect for – background music to play as filler in between other random samplings. It was solid, but not quite strong enough to survive on its own.

The next few days I played it more, and the EP has definitely begun to grow on me. It still never fully captivates me, but there’s something there that keeps my interest anyway. It ebbs and flows perfectly, capturing the elusive emo mood that Deep Elm Records has been promoting for years – like Moving Mountains or a less vocally driven and more melodic Brandtson; maybe some Dredg in there as well. And when they do throw in vocals (on Gumption), they sound like a weaker, less sure of himself John K. Samson.

In a way, the album is soothing in its repetitiveness and in all honesty, I never thought I’d ever listen to it as much as I have. There’s an alluring effect here that enables the album to be replayed over and over again without becoming nauseating. It captures a feeling and emotion with dreamy guitars and keyboard effects floating around a steady rhytm and because of that, I can’t knock it in any way.

Still, it remains simply background music. Great background music, but background music just the same and because of that it comes off as somewhat, well, harmless.