Moving Mountains – New Light

Now well into a galaxy-wide, summer-long tour, Moving Mountains’ EP release of New Light seems a counterintuitive decision. Usually, the order is slightly different: big release, tour, EP. Additionally, said EP is usually little more than a smattering of b-sides that couldn’t make the cut on the album itself. New Light is not only new ground for the band, but is a significant stylistic departure from its biggest offering yet, Waves.

Moving Mountains has produced a sufficient depth and breadth of work that it’s be about time their fans start getting pissed off at the band’s progress, and I suspect this EP is just the spark as this isn’t just a short form of Waves. It is both a wiser and more practical sound, poppier in every way, with the same crisp production values, without the electronic gimmicks. Gregory Dunn’s vocals need no great assistance in the booth, but some of the more ambitious range found on old tracks like “Where Two Bodies Lie” has been replaced by a smoother subtlety hardcore finds may find off-putting. The capacity to incense strangers is the mark of a band becoming successful, so this should not be taken as a criticism.

My criticism would be that much of the sound weaving through New Light has been trodden before by bigger bands, who were willing to wring their vocalist through more painful twists and turns to fill out what is, here, a collection of tracks that each feel a bit light in the middle. Where there is greater tonal sophistication on this offering than any of their earlier EPs, too much of the listening experience is spent waiting for the tune to go somewhere, largely to no avail. This is a wildly overwrought criticism of four tracks, but each of the four could be leaner, meaner things such as Moving Mountains and its forebears are known for.

By my reckoning Moving Mountains’ present course bears favorable resemblance to an early Mogwai and even to an early Murder By Death’s minstralism before they took their dark turn through their spaghetti Western loops. Moving Mountains has a vocalist with wide enough range to take the band wherever they choose to go, and if their ramped-up touring schedule is a sign of albums to come this EP lays the groundwork for big new things from a genre desperately in need of precisely that. Old-school progressive emo in a way unlike other, grittier releases of the genre this year, Moving Mountains fits right in with tourmates Coheed in Cambria, and fans of the more fantastical, classical offshoots under that umbrella will warmly welcome a new addition to their libraries.