Before taking the stage at a select set of music festivals over the summer, Texas-reared songwriter Chance Peña is revealing a loose single titled “The Mountain Is You.” Over an escalating baroque-pop instrumental that recalls the cabin-fever folk of early Bon Iver before blossoming into something channeling the grander-scale stomp-and-holler sounds of early-’10s alt-rock radio in the final minute, his subdued falsetto also evolves into a more confident bellow.
“I think it was just getting off tour, having not done anything for myself in a few weeks,” Peña shares of the track’s inspiration of diagnosing and addressing issues as internal, rather than symptoms of the external world. “I was just like, ‘Who am I and what am I doing?’ Writing that song was just verbally processing my emotions and finding meaning in it all.”
As for the instrumental, Peña notes that he was largely moved to compose the song based on the sound of the track’s underlying hum. “The only influence was the pedal organ you hear in the background of the whole song,” he explains. “I had recorded it as a voice memo before a show we played in Portland and I really loved how it made me feel.”
The track follows Peña’s recent headlining tour of Europe. Find more details on his summer festival schedule here, and listen to the new single below or on your preferred streaming service.
