Mountains? I’ve seen mountains!
If Weird Al was a poetry slam champion…It would sound nothing like this.
Download mp3 demo Chords (pdf)
Ever since I discovered Nottingham songwriter Simon J Curd (who records as Mountain Schmountain) I’ve been a fan. His minimalistic style is unlike anything I’d previously encountered and as I’m the kind of person who’d start a website analysing all 211 Beatles songs it’s not surprising I wanted to take the tunes apart to see what makes Mountain Schmountain tick.
It’s been a long standing goal to try to write a style parody in order to ‘get’ their very original approach and here it is. The elements I’ve isolated are
- Through composed
- Poetic lyrics (often the entire song being little more than a sentence).
- Very short (Cutlery)
- Often mentioning animals (Unnatural Stances , No Teeth Marks , Bone White Paint)
- Almost always in key of D, and played in dropped D (Fibres On The Frames)
- Hyper-real attention to detail (Between Insects And Biplanes)
- Often taking a snapshot of a single moment (Scribble)
- Animals and inanimate objects seem to speak (Perfect Wreck)
- Songs come to a sudden end (New Moons)
- And Simon has a very idiosyncratic way of saying “that’s the end of that song” in live performances
So that’s all, apart from quoting Pachabel’s Canon, getting in a pun on the name Mountain Schmountain and yes, that is a mistle thrush you can hear on the track. Hope you like it!