Trace Mountains
Lost in the Country
Release Date: Apr 10, 2020
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Indie Rock, Indie Pop
Record label: Run for Cover Records
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Album Review: Lost in the Country by Trace Mountains
Great, Based on 3 Critics
Based on rating 8.0/10
What if the worries that keep you awake at night--fear of commitment, awareness of mortality, the inevitability of loss--could, instead, motivate you during the day? That is the gist of Trace Mountains' Lost in the Country, a brisk indie rock record that bluntly addresses our deepest concerns and transmutes them into 10 winning anthems about persevering. In the worldview of Dave Benton, the Trace Mountains singer-songwriter who gathered a studio band to shape these songs, the cure is sometimes as simple as a long walk in the woods or a solitary cry in a foreign rock club. Or maybe it's recognizing, as he does here more than once, that funneling your sadness into a tune just to make it through another day is perfectly acceptable.
Based on rating 8/10
During his early days in New York's DIY scene, Dave Benton was known for being the tender voice of honesty in the three-songwriter band LVL UP. With LVL UP now dissolved, Benton is fully leaning into the same burning sentimentality that he has been known for in his past work with his second album as Trace Mountains. Now based in the Hudson Valley region of New York, Benton uses his sleepily warm voice with wide open guitar tones on Lost in the Country.
Based on rating 7/10
With the 2018 disbandment of punk outfit LVL UP, New York singer/guitarist Dave Benton underwent somewhat of a sea change, moving up to the idyllic Hudson River Valley town of Kingston and placing a renewed focus on his laid-back solo work under the name, Trace Mountains. Although the project has been around nearly as long as LVL UP, it was a far more casual affair that has so far yielded a somewhat fragmented lo-fi collection of demos (2016's Buttery Sprouts & Other Songs) and a more cohesive 2018 full-length called A Partner to Lean On. Reflecting Benton's more rural lifestyle, his sophomore outing, Lost in the Country, takes a more ruminative approach and its pastoral guitar pop easily stands as the most pleasing and focused set of his career.
'Lost in the Country'
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